Woman Power

Visual Art major creates powerful thesis project

By Allison Gorman

While studying abroad at the Université de Caen Normandie in northern France in fall 2019, Buchanan Fellow Katrina Scott sought inspiration for her Honors thesis project. An idea grew out of an association with a women’s rights group on the campus, paired with a tour of art museums in Italy.

Scott wanted to change the narrative of persecuted and oppressed women depicted in art throughout history and talk about women’s power. She created four 16-by-20-inch works of art depicting what is possible for women: subjugation, awareness, anger, and renewal. Each multimedia piece is a single animal—hare, alligator, wolf, and snake.

Katrina Scott's Honors thesis artwork series began with An Innocent Victim (inset).

Scott’s fearful hare, watchful alligator, angry wolf, and shedding snake symbolize a journey she herself has experienced.

“There was a period in my life when I was dealing with a lot of trauma, and I remember feeling like I wanted to shed my skin and become a different person that hadn’t had those experiences,” said Scott, a Visual Art and French double-major with a minor in Psychology.

With the help of an Undergraduate Research Experience and Creative Activity (URECA) grant and faculty mentor Erin Anfinson, Scott completed the powerful project in spite of a COVID-19 campus shutdown and pandemic burnout. At the advice of Anfinson, she stepped back from the project and remembered why she was doing it.

The paintings, completed in August 2020, were displayed in Todd Hall for her senior exhibition during the Spring 2021 semester. Two of the paintings, An Innocent Victim and Hell Hath No Fury, also were published in the fall 2020 issue of MTSU’s Collage: A Journal of Creative Expression.