I discovered in previous drawings that using my watercolour pencils (dry) in my black cartridge paper sketchbook gives a statue-like visual look to a drawing, so I used this combination again, to bring a bronze statue quality to my drawing. My aim was to invite the viewer to vividly imagine what Shepherd would look like as this particular design of a (life-sized) bronze statue standing on a plinth (which is why I placed my drawing on an easel to give the idea of height).
Before beginning the drawing above, I did this sketch below in my A3 size sketchbook with a 7B pencil:
The aim of this pencil drawing was twofold: one, to think out how to transform the painting of Shepherd as a 10 year old girl into a full length statue of her as an adult; two, to create a full length pencil portrait of Shepherd. I based her adult face on my previous sketch of her (2018). Here, I stayed with the same clothes she was wearing in Nasmyth's 1788 painting. I considered adding the jacket and bonnet her mother is wearing in Nasmyth's painting to adapt her look to a more adult style. However, that painting is an outdoor one and, in that era, women changed their clothing style depending on whether they were indoors or outdoors, what they were doing and even the time of day.
I wanted to depict her as she may look when writing at her desk so decided on a dress-style to suit. Nevertheless, this dress is not as casual as it looks - I found paintings of women in this era wearing this style of dress in various different social settings. So portraying her in this style somewhat straddles informal and formal settings because it is a dress that could be worn to a ball or salon but could equally be worn at home when sitting at her desk writing. I also remained with this dress design because it was a style which remained in fashion when Shepherd was an adult, for instance, Regency era dresses. As I was drawing it, I thought about how to clearly symbolise her as a philosopher and author of treatises in a way which would be immediately obvious to the viewer, from a distance, without needing to read the inscription first. So, while drawing her arms, I incorporated one of her published books in her left hand. To emphasise her philosophy, I inscribed the title of her last treatise on the book cover.
I want Shepherd to have the equivalent statue to the male philosophers, and generally, look the way numerous public, historical, respectful, representative statues of men are designed to honour them. Not some abstract statue because that would objectify Shepherd, erase her from history, in a way, by not depicting her as a human being, so preventing the viewer from connecting with Shepherd herself and her philosophical writings. When I created the hashtag #StatueForMaryShepherd (registered 2018) I did not mean for in the way the Wollstonecraft statue is designed ie. for her not representational one of her. I simply meant for in the sense of posthumously giving Shepherd a statue that honours her as a philosopher, celebrates her treatises and renders her visible and known to the general public by depicting her as realistically as possible.
I am aware that there is a copy-cat petition for a statue for Mary Shepherd created a year after mine in 2019 (after a conference [25th-26th January 2019] was changed to one bearing her name despite none of the talks being on Shepherd). Their petition uses very similar wording to mine and is with the same petition organization (change.org). They even have an identical hashtag to mine for their campaign other than leaving out Mary Shepherd's surname (ie. #statueformary) which doesn't even make sense, especially given that Mary is a very common name. The person who put forward this petition was an UG student at the time. Somebody within the philosophy faculty should have stopped her and pointed out that you do not create a petition for something that is already out there as one. The government made this plain quite recently that this is the case. Indeed, I quote from their website giving guidelines and standards that must be adhered to when submitting a petition:
'We'll have to reject your petition if:
It calls for the same action as a petition that's already open."
Therefore, the petition that was created after mine should be taken down. It's not possible to be unaware of my petition, it was and still is easy to find through a quick Google search and is on the same petition site as theirs. I am an active feminist/researcher in Philosophy and had already presented two academic papers on Shepherd at well-known academic events, submitted an abstract on Shepherd to a Scottish Philosophy conference, written an ebook on Shepherd and had attended philosophy conferences for many years, including the week-long Hume Society 2011 conference at Edinburgh University, Scotland. So I'm struggling to see how their remarkably similar Shepherd Statue petition could be created in error.
So it's inappropriate that the University of Edinburgh Philosophy Department, Diversity Reading List and Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) are supporting this conference committee's copycat petition while completely ignoring mine. Yet, at the same time, claiming they acknowledge and support under-represented people in Philosophy e.g. women, BME and LGBT+. Clearly not, when I am a young, lesbian, gender-fluid woman who is ethnically half Slav, yet they do nothing but distract off and drown out my petition. Just because some (mainly students) philosophers wish, as a group, to pull rank on me thinking they have more power than I do as a single individual, doesn't mean they should be allowed to do so. And, furthermore, they employ a technological expert to run their campaign for them.
These philosophers could have simply signed my petition if they felt so strongly about Mary Shepherd the philosopher that hardly anyone researches! I did a headcount and believe there are no more than 10 others who have written on Shepherd, worldwide. Indeed, it appears that I am the only philosopher in the UK to research and write papers and a book on Mary Shepherd. I'm also a British philosopher so you can't feign ignorance. I also shared it with my then Facebook friends on Facebook (friends and visible to the public) who, all but one, are philosophers. I would have welcomed support from the philosophy community, students and lecturers! I still do! My petition is on-going so I'll be delighted if you sign it. 👍🙂
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