American art historian Linda Nochlin’s seminal essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?” argued that women were excluded from achieving greatness in art by social norms and biological imperatives. The division of labour in families and society relegated women to the domestic sphere, effectively shutting them out of the world of art, except as models. There have been exceptions, but not enough of them.

That exclusion has been eroding for the past 30 years, to the point where the majority of art students in Canada today are women. Helen McLean’s memoir, Details From a Larger Canvas, is, on one level, a case study in how hard it was – and still can be – for women to reconcile artistic aspirations with the demands of a family. McLean studied art as a young woman, but she gave up a career as a professional painter to raise a family, eventually returning to art after her children were grown.

The book’s tone is often disjointed, with a bitter edge that sometimes seems mean-spirited. McLean’s anger is understandable, but not the air of condescension that seeps into many of her memories of friends and family. The chapters “Francis” and “Sean Again” seem to use people as foils for argument, down to recreating dialogue that can only show them in a bad light. There are also strange omissions of detail. McLean makes much of her artistic career, but provides little detail by example, dealing with her entire post-graduate studies in one sentence.

The book improves in the latter chapters, which lack the heavy-handed rationalizations of the earlier material. The final chapter, “Vita Brevis, Ars Longa,” a charming memoir of a trip to Italy, is by far the best piece in the book. Details From a Larger Canvas is as fragmentary as the title would suggests – there is detail, to be sure, but the larger canvas never seems to resolve itself.