Paintings of female cowboys offer a feminist view of the Wild West

Leeds College of Art kicks off a new year of exhibitions with a selection of works by American artist Felice House; featuring paintings of famous western actors such as Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, Gary Cooper and James Dean, reimagined as female cowboys.

Re/Western features seven large-scale portraits taken from iconic scenes from the western genre, but with the leading characters repainted as women. By projecting contemporary women into these heroic roles, House asks us to take a critical view of gender stereotypes and the access of women to power.

An accomplished figurative painter, Felice "strives, through her portraits of women, to provide a counterpoint to the passive representations found in art historical tradition. Her subjects are beautiful and observable, but they are not consumable."

Felice comes from a long line of artists. Her grandmother is an award-winning Vermont weaver, her mother is a painter and her father has worked in computer graphics since its inception. When she walked into her first oil painting class at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1998, holding a box of her mother’s old paints, she "felt like she had come home. She knew just what to do."

Re/Western: Felice House takes place between 20 January and 24 March 2017 at Blenheim Walk Gallery, and is curated by Sharon Bainbridge with Joanna Craddock and Catriona McAra. A selection of the works below will be featured as part of the exhibition. For more details, visit leeds-art.ac.uk.

Via Creative Boom submissions | All images courtesy of the artist