Junior Anya Goleski Explores the Pressure Women Face

Anya Goleski is a creative visionary; a gifted artist and a really brilliant young woman. The Huntington High School junior is among a very select group of 84 Long Island teenagers to have their artwork chosen for display at the 30th annual Long Island’s Best exhibit at the Heckscher Museum of Art.

Ms. Goleski is studying with Huntington art teacher Kristin Singer. Her overall weighted academic grade average exceeds 101 and her exceptional performance spans every subject area.

This year’s Long Island’s Best initiative drew 402 entries from students attending 63 public, private and parochial high schools in Nassau and Suffolk.

“Students are challenged to select artwork on view in the Heckscher Museum as the inspiration for their own work, making creative connections with the generations who have come before them,” according to the contest’s rules. “Students have also written artist statements explaining their creative process.”

Ms. Goleski’s artwork was inspired by Emma Stebbins’ marble sculpture, which is in the Heckscher Museum of Art’s collection. Modeled in 1859, the sculpture was carved in 1870.

“In 1860 and 1861, Stebbins included a version of this bust in the first exhibitions of her sculpture in New York City, Boston, and Philadelphia,” according to the Heckscher Museum. “Some nineteenth-century viewers would have understood the work as a portrait of Stebbins’s lover, and most would have appreciated it as an image of one of the most famous women of the day. One critic wrote: ‘The grander features of Miss Cushman’s head are familiar to all who know the tragic artist; the womanly nature of the woman comes to us in this bust translated by a woman’s intimate tenderness.’ Stebbins ultimately created five versions of the bust. In 1873, she exhibited one at the Women’s Pavilion of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, a landmark exhibition in the history of art.”

Artist’s Statement by Anya Goleski

Picture Perfect explores the pressure women face to meet unrealistic expectations of perfection, both in the past and in modern society. My painting was inspired by Emma Stebbins’s sculpture [of] Charlotte Cushman and the story behind its creation. Stebbins created this work at a time when women artists were heavily judged and limited, and when her same-sex relationship with Cushman was not accepted by society. Despite these challenges, Stebbins portrayed Cushman with tenderness, strength, and dignity, quietly challenging the strict social norms placed on women in the nineteenth century.

During Stebbins’s time, women were expected to fit into a narrow mold that dictated how they should look, behave, and live. Breaking away from these expectations often led to criticism and exclusion. Stebbins and Cushman were not immune to this pressure, yet Stebbins chose to represent Cushman as a real, complex individual rather than an idealized image of perfection.

Although society has changed, women today still face similar expectations. There is constant pressure to look perfect, act perfect, and manage everything without showing vulnerability. In Picture Perfect, I express this struggle through fractured expressions and emotional tension. The figures represent the exhaustion that comes from trying to stay “within the lines” while hiding true emotions.

Like Emma Stebbins, who challenged social norms through her art and life, my work pushes back against unrealistic standards. Picture Perfect reminds viewers that perfection is an illusion and that it is okay to be emotional, flawed, and real.