Women Portraits: Trades & Professions is engaged with the representation of trades and professions manifested as portraits of women. It celebrates the often-invisible contribution that women have made to many trades and professions that have hitherto been historically associated with men, while women have been personified as ideals within arts and culture, as muses or as objects of beauty. The portraits propose alternative representations of women identified through the tools associated with each specific trade or profession.

They are constructed imaginary portraits, in which their professions are made evident by the tools of their trades such as the beekeeper and her smoker, the GP and her stethoscope or the astronomer and her telescope. In this way they follow in that rich tradition of portraiture, whereby status and profession are identified through the props that surround the sitter.