“It is unthinkable that a national government which represents women should ignore the issue of the right of all women to political freedom.”

That’s a quote from Lucy Burns, an American suffragist you may not have heard of.

Kansas City artist Gloria Heifner wants to change that. She’s created a series of paintings that include portraits and quotes from women who she thinks deserve to be discovered, ranging from Susan B. Anthony,  Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth to Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinham, and Ruth Bader Ginsberg,

The ”Audacious Women” exhibit is on display now at the Westport Center for the Arts, 201 Westport Road, through Nov. 15. She’ll also be present for a closing reception on Nov. 15 following the WCA’s Brown Bag Concert at noon (which, by the way, also honors women).

Heifner explained how she thinks of an audacious woman.

“An audacious woman is someone who will stand up and fight to be recognized as a human in her own right,” Heifner says. “She is a woman who says, these are my rights, whether they’re in the constitution or not. As a human, I have these rights, and I’m going to live my life based on these rights I have as a human being.”

Heifner is an experimental artist who works in abstract acrylics, portraits, and reverse decoupage. She has shown her work at several art galleries in the Kansas City area. She began the works in the Audacious Women series because she felt women were in danger of losing some of the ground they had made.

“I was trying to think of what I could do to keep moving forward,” she says.

She began researching women she knew about and finding others who were less well known.

As she became inspired to help others learn more, Heifner decided she needed to do more than paint their portraits. She added some of the women’s words to tell the audience more.

“ I decided putting a quote there would tell them a little something about the woman and possibly intrigue them enough to go Google them.”

Heifner says she will continue to paint women, both living and dead because women need to know their history. There will never be a time, she believes, when women can sit back and say the fight for their rights is done.