12 books like Everything She Touched

By Marilyn Chase,

Here are 12 books that Everything She Touched fans have personally recommended if you like Everything She Touched. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

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Book cover of Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art

Miriam Schulman Author Of Artpreneur: The Step-by-Step Guide to Making a Sustainable Living from Your Creativity

From my list on artists monetizing their creativity.

Why am I passionate about this?

With over 20 years of experience as a professional artist and a successful track record of earning six figures a year from my art, I know firsthand what it takes to build a thriving artistic career. As the host of the Inspiration Place podcast, and founder of the Artist Incubator program, I’ve dedicated my life’s work to helping artists everywhere achieve their full potential and reach their goals. When you overcome the common challenges and mindset blocks that hold so many artists back and learn the practical tools and strategies you need for selling your art, you too find the same success.

Miriam's book list on artists monetizing their creativity

Miriam Schulman Why did Miriam love this book?

This is an in-depth and well-researched exploration of the abstract expressionist movement, with a particular focus on the female artists who played a crucial role in shaping the movement. This book offers a fresh perspective on a significant period in the history of modern art and provides readers with a deeper understanding of the contributions made by women artists during this time. What I liked most about this book was the spotlight it shines on the critical role of key female artists in the abstract expressionist movement, who often get overlooked in traditional art historical narratives. Overall, Ninth Street Women is a must-read for anyone interested in learning about the groundbreaking contributions of female artists in the 20th century, and the impact of the abstract expressionist movement on contemporary art.

By Mary Gabriel,

Why should I read it?

5 authors picked Ninth Street Women as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NINTH STREET WOMEN is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating story of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting--not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they painted, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and groundbreaking artists to come.

They include Lee Krasner and Elaine de Kooning, whose careers were at times overshadowed by the fame of their husbands, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, but who emerged as stunning talents in their own right, as well as a younger…


Book cover of Women, Art, and Society

Celia Stahr Author Of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist

From my list on overviews and individual lives of women artists.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I found the layered poetry of Sylvia Plath as riveting as an impasto-layered canvas by Vincent Van Gogh. A love for the rhythm of words and paint, as well as the power of art to tell stories and critique history led me to study art history. Influential college professors opened my eyes to the systematic exclusion of women from art and history. Today, I’m a professor at the University of San Francisco, where I specialize in modern, contemporary, and African art, with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. I’m particularly interested in women artists and artists who cross cultural boundaries. 

Celia's book list on overviews and individual lives of women artists

Celia Stahr Why did Celia love this book?

As an undergrad, I was blessed to have two professors who changed the course of my life: Angela Davis and Whitney Chadwick. Both of these professors discussed the intersectionality of gender, race, and class. Women, Art, and Society was published in 1990, and in 2020, the sixth edition was released. Although women artists’ representation in art history pedagogy has improved since 1990, the art world in general still favors men over women, making Chadwick’s book a relevant read. It provides a historical and critical look at women artists from the Middle Ages to the present, covering a range of media and artists from various cultural and geographical backgrounds. It challenges the assumption that great women artists are the exception to the rule and charts the evolution of feminist art history. 

By Whitney Chadwick,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Women, Art, and Society as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Whitney Chadwick's acclaimed study challenges the assumption that great women artists are exceptions to the rule, who 'transcended' their sex to produce major works of art. While acknowledging the many women whose contribution to visual culture since the Middle Ages have often been neglected, Chadwick's survey amounts to much more than an alternative canon of women artists: it re-examines the works themselves and the ways in which they have been perceived as marginal, often in direct reference to gender. In her disussion of feminism and its influence on such a reappraisal, the author also addresses the closely related issues of…


Book cover of Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists

Celia Stahr Author Of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist

From my list on overviews and individual lives of women artists.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I found the layered poetry of Sylvia Plath as riveting as an impasto-layered canvas by Vincent Van Gogh. A love for the rhythm of words and paint, as well as the power of art to tell stories and critique history led me to study art history. Influential college professors opened my eyes to the systematic exclusion of women from art and history. Today, I’m a professor at the University of San Francisco, where I specialize in modern, contemporary, and African art, with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. I’m particularly interested in women artists and artists who cross cultural boundaries. 

Celia's book list on overviews and individual lives of women artists

Celia Stahr Why did Celia love this book?

If you want to learn about the history of African American women artists from the era of slavery to the 21st century, this is the book to read. Lisa E. Farrington astutely analyzes this fraught history with a style of writing that’s available to both scholars and non-scholars alike. It’s for anyone who has an interest in how images of Black women have evolved over time from racist stereotypes in art and popular culture to empowering images created by Black women artists who “contested society’s insistence on their subservience and vulgarity.” Farrington’s groundbreaking book, which was published in 2005, makes it clear that when Black women artists control their own images, it changes the trajectory of both art history and popular culture. 

By Lisa E. Farrington,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Creating Their Own Image as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Hailed as "a captivating and thorough study of a long-ignored aspect of America's art history" (CHOICE), Creating Their Own Image offers the first comprehensive history of African-American women artists, spanning from slavery to the Harlem Renaissance and the tumultuous civil rights era, right up to the present day. Lavishly illustrated throughout with color illustrations, this magnificent volume richly details hundreds of important works-including
some images never before published-to present a portrait of artistic creativity unprecedented in its scope and ambition. Weaving together an expansive collection of artists, styles, and periods, Lisa Farrington argues that for centuries African-American women artists have…


Book cover of Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract

Celia Stahr Author Of Frida in America: The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist

From my list on overviews and individual lives of women artists.

Why am I passionate about this?

As a teenager, I found the layered poetry of Sylvia Plath as riveting as an impasto-layered canvas by Vincent Van Gogh. A love for the rhythm of words and paint, as well as the power of art to tell stories and critique history led me to study art history. Influential college professors opened my eyes to the systematic exclusion of women from art and history. Today, I’m a professor at the University of San Francisco, where I specialize in modern, contemporary, and African art, with an emphasis upon issues of gender, race, ethnicity, and class. I’m particularly interested in women artists and artists who cross cultural boundaries. 

Celia's book list on overviews and individual lives of women artists

Celia Stahr Why did Celia love this book?

Before reading this book, I had never heard of Mary Sully. I’m thrilled that I now know about her stunning “personality prints,” abstract designs arranged in horizontal triptychs. Sully, who was born on the Standing Rock reservation in 1896, was largely a self-taught artist who never achieved wide recognition. Philip Deloria, a professor of history and a relative of Sully’s, delves into the complexities of what it meant to be a Dakota Sioux woman artist working with an innovative style of abstract art that didn’t fit into neat categories. This mirrors, Deloria says, the “scramble for survival” that an “Indian” woman had to navigate in a “difficult world.” That difficult world is still with us today, making this story a throughline to the present and a must-read.

By Philip J. Deloria,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Becoming Mary Sully as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Dakota Sioux artist Mary Sully was the great-granddaughter of respected nineteenth-century portraitist Thomas Sully, who captured the personalities of America's first generation of celebrities (including the figure of Andrew Jackson immortalized on the twenty-dollar bill). Born on the Standing Rock reservation in South Dakota in 1896, she was largely self-taught. Steeped in the visual traditions of beadwork, quilling, and hide painting, she also engaged with the experiments in time, space, symbolism, and representation characteristic of early twentieth-century modernist art. And like her great-grandfather Sully was fascinated by celebrity: over two decades, she produced hundreds of colorful and dynamic abstract triptychs,…


Book cover of A Life Made by Hand: The Story of Ruth Asawa

Elizabeth Brown Author Of Dancing Through Fields of Color: The Story of Helen Frankenthaler

From my list on women artists who broke barriers.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have been involved in the arts all my life, working as a writer, in film, and as a musician. I have degrees in music and creative writing and have studied visual arts and art history extensively as well. Besides being an author, I teach writing and humanities at the college level. I hope you enjoy these books as much as I do!

Elizabeth's book list on women artists who broke barriers

Elizabeth Brown Why did Elizabeth love this book?

This book tells the fascinating story of Ruth Asawa’s journey to becoming a sculptor and passing on these ideals to the next generation through her work as an advocate for arts education The illustrations are beautifully rendered and colorful. Inspirational for budding artists everywhere, the book also contains teaching tools and an art activity.

By Andrea D'Aquino,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Life Made by Hand as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Ruth Asawa (1926-2013) was an influential and award-winning sculptor, a beloved figure in the Bay Area art world, and a devoted activist who advocated tirelessly for arts education. This lushly illustrated book by collage artist Andrea D'Aquino brings Asawa's creative journey to life, detailing the influence of her childhood in a farming family, and her education at Black Mountain College where she pursued an experimental course of education with leading avant-garde artists and thinkers such as Anni and Josef Albers, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham, and Robert Rauschenberg. Delightful and substantial, this engaging title for young art lovers includes a page…


Book cover of A Special Providence

Bill Scheft Author Of Shrink Thyself

From my list on that make me feel like an absolute fraud.

Why am I passionate about this?

Why do I use the word “fraud?” The answer is agonizingly simple. My whole life, and I mean since I was ten, I wanted to be “a real writer.” Whatever that was. And now here we are, 55 years later. Despite my great good fortune to spend 24 years coming up with jokes for Dave Letterman, three years as a columnist at Sports Illustrated, and to have my name on four novels, if you asked me, “Are you a real writer?” I would tell you, “not yet….” Here are five real writers.

Bill's book list on that make me feel like an absolute fraud

Bill Scheft Why did Bill love this book?

My favorite novelist. Laureate of Broken People. Criminally underappreciated. In 1987, 15 years before I was lucky enough to be published, I wrote to Yates after I got his address from his daughter Monica, who was dating my fellow stand-up comic friend, some unknown guy named Larry David. In the letter, I revealed that I had just stolen his out-of-print 1969 novel about a post-WWII mother and homecoming son from the NYC Public Library and that it would always be my favorite book of his because it was the only one I had not yet read. He wrote back that it was his favorite work as well, then added, “I admire comics because it is much easier to break people’s hearts than to make them laugh.” (Spoiler alert: Larry David turns out okay…)

By Richard Yates,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked A Special Providence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

An ebook compilation of inspirational writings, featuring seven classic works in one high quality, fully searchable edition:

The compilation includes:

'Mere Christianity'
'The Screwtape Letters'
'Surprised by Joy'
'The Four Loves'
'The Problem of Pain'
'The Great Divorce'
'Miracles'

C. S. Lewis's works continue to attract thousands of new readers every year, appealing to those seeking wisdom and calm in a hectic and ever-changing world. Each volume is written with the lucidity, warmth and wit that has made Lewis revered as a writer the world over.

From 'The Problem of Pain' - a wise and compassionate exploration of suffering -…


Book cover of You Must Change Your Life: The Story of Rainer Maria Rilke and Auguste Rodin

Michael Findlay Author Of Seeing Slowly: Looking at Modern Art

From my list on making modern art exciting.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have spent an exciting half-century in the New York art world as a dealer and an author and while my passion is to encourage people to enjoy art for art’s sake (rather than money or prestige) my many close friendships with artists demonstrate how much their life informs their art. The authors of these five books bring the art as well as the artists to life.

Michael's book list on making modern art exciting

Michael Findlay Why did Michael love this book?

Rilke, a shy young Austrian poet goes to Paris in 1902 to write a book about Rodin, a famous and famously difficult sculptor twice his age. Not only do they become friends but the ideas they shared about art and creativity are influential to this day. Guest appearances by Paul Cézanne, Henri Matisse, George Bernard Shaw, and many other notable artists and writers.

I am an art dealer who is also a writer so I was fascinated to learn about the relationship between Rodin, a great sculptor whose work I know very well, and the young poet Rilke, whose work I knew little about. Art and poetry come from the same wellspring of imagination and both artist and poet were inspired by each other despite the difference in their age and practice.

By Rachel Corbett,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked You Must Change Your Life as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In Paris in 1902, Auguste Rodin had just completed The Thinker; visiting from Prague was Rainer Maria Rilke, broke and with writer's block. When Rilke was commissioned to write a book about Rodin, everything changed. You Must Change Your Life tells one of the great stories of modern art and literature: Rodin and Rilke's years together as master and disciple, their heartbreaking rift and finally, their moving reconciliation. Rachel Corbett reveals how Rodin's friendship led Rilke to write his most celebrated poems and inspired his Letters to a Young Poet. She captures the dawn of Modernism amid the characters that…


Book cover of The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini

Peter Elbling Author Of The Food Taster

From my list on the brilliance of the Italian Renaissance.

Why am I passionate about this?

Folk-singing was my first vocation, but I made a sudden left turn into comedy, becoming one-half of The Times Square Two. After a few years touring the world, I settled in Hollywood and became an actor, writer, and director. I was inspired to write The Food Taster by the maître d’ of a famous restaurant in Los Angeles. When I complained that my meal had made me ill, he smiled and said I should get myself a food taster.

Peter's book list on the brilliance of the Italian Renaissance

Peter Elbling Why did Peter love this book?

I appreciate people who don’t shrink from celebrating their own genius, and Benvenuto Cellini was indeed a genius at it. Still, I didn’t mind his boasting, whether it was about his intricate works as a goldsmith or his killing of a rival, for his sense of humor about himself more than made up for his monstrous ego. And even if he had left us nothing else but his autobiography, he bequeathed to us a brilliant record of the Renaissance.

By Benvenuto Cellini,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith - a passionate craftsman who was admired and resented by the most powerful political and artistic personalities in sixteenth-century Florence, Rome and Paris. He was also a murderer and a braggart, a shameless adventurer who at different times experienced both papal persecution and imprisonment, and the adulation of the royal court. Inn-keepers and prostitutes, kings and cardinals, artists and soldiers rub shoulders in the pages of his notorious autobiography: a vivid portrait of the manners and morals of both the rulers of the day and of their subjects. Written with supreme…


Book cover of 3x Abstraction: New Methods of Drawing by Hilma af Klint, Emma Kunz, and Agnes Martin

Ib Vindbjerg Author Of The First Book I Wish I'd Had at Art College

From my list on creativity and consciousness.

Why am I passionate about this?

Having graduated as a teacher before undertaking an art degree has made me think that art is not just the kind of stuff we encounter in galleries, but it is about creativity in a much broader sense. Two decades in art education and galleries across London have taught me that as creatives and teachers, we do not only teach others, but we all teach each other on our journeys through life. Creativity is intricately woven into the fabric of our lives and the list of books here are some of my favourite books on the subject.

Ib's book list on creativity and consciousness

Ib Vindbjerg Why did Ib love this book?

An inspiring book about how three artists explore the creative process at the intersection of drawing, consciousness, and healing. Hilma Af-Klint's approach to drawing I can best describe as transpersonal, Agnes Martin's drawings to me appear as visual representations of stillness and Emma Kunz's use of drawing to make healing mandalas are all incredibly inspiring.  

By Catherine de Zegher (editor), Hendel Teicher (editor),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked 3x Abstraction as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

3x an Abstraction presents the extraordinary work of three important women artists whose innovative ideas and approaches to drawing had a significant impact on the history of modern abstraction. Hilma af Klint (Sweden, 1862-1944), Emma Kunz (Switzerland, 1892-1963) and Agnes Martin (Canada, b. 1912; U.S. citizenship 1950) approached geometric abstraction not as formalism, but as a means of structuring philosophical, scientific, and spiritual ideas. Using line, geometry and the grid, each of these artists created diagrammatic drawings of their exploration of complex belief systems and restorative practices. Noteworthy among the 150 illustrations in the volume are a large number of…


Book cover of Hilma af Klint

L.S. Berthelsen Author Of The Haling and the Scottish Templars

From my list on navigating ancient wisdom traditions and the cosmos.

Why am I passionate about this?

I am a Templar history enthusiast with a penchant for spiritual surprises hiding in plain sight. I believe words are vessels of spirit and that writing opens a channel of communication for manifesting thoughts into reality. Traveling throughout Europe, Scotland, and England has deepened my confidence that there was so much more to the Middle Ages than crusades and feudalism. The Templars facilitated many societal transformations, including a flowering of mysticism under their guardianship. The mystery is… why have we not connected these dots before? And I suspect there’s much more to discover! My books gather research threads from seemingly isolated historic characters, places, and events into cohesive, inspired, and vibrant stories.

L.S.'s book list on navigating ancient wisdom traditions and the cosmos

L.S. Berthelsen Why did L.S. love this book?

I love books that validate spiritual creativity and ‘realign’  misconceptions in the annals of history. This inspiring biography documents the life of a 19th-century female artist, who not only dedicated her life to unique spiritual creativity, but also, is currently upending art history. It turns out that her art predates the establishment of the Modern Art Movement, which academia has attributed to men who painted several decades later. Hilma af Klint was a woman before her time. I also love the book’s color plates displaying her mastery of geometry and biology. This book is a well-researched jewel and a gift to art history. 

By Julia Voss, Anne Posten (translator),

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Hilma af Klint as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A highly anticipated biography of the enigmatic and popular Swedish painter.

The Swedish painter Hilma af Klint (1862-1944) was 44 years old when she broke with the academic tradition in which she had been trained. While her naturalistic landscapes and botanicals were shown during her lifetime, her body of radical, abstract works never received the same attention. Today, it is widely accepted that af Klint produced the earliest abstract paintings by a trained European artist. But this is only part of her story. Not only was she a successful woman artist, but she was also an avowed clairvoyant and mystic.…


Book cover of Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
Book cover of Women, Art, and Society
Book cover of Creating Their Own Image: The History of African-American Women Artists

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