Art Toronto, Canada’s international contemporary and modern art fair, is being held this weekend, and to highlight this important event we sat down with a few women artists for a special showcase.The art industry continues to be marked by inequality: as of the first half of 2018, there were only 5 women on Artnet’s list of the 100 best-selling artists at auction. The number of women on this list has fluctuated between just 2 and 6 since 2013. Overall, 96.1% of artworks sold at auction are by male artists.The top three museums in the world — the British Museum, the Louvre, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art —have never had female directors.Women are still behind men in directors positions in at museums with budgets over $15M, holding 30% of art museum director positions and earning 75¢ for every dollar earned by male directors.Our first guest part of our Art Toronto showcase is Janet Werner, a Winnipeg-born, Montreal-based painter. Janet’s work is presented at Art Toronto and she has a solo show opening at the start of November at the Musee d’art contemporain de Montreal.Janet studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and went on to attend Yale University where she received her Masters of Fine Arts. She taught painting and drawing at the University of Saskatchewan and started teaching at Concordia University when she moved to Montreal in 1999.Janet is known for her impressive, large scale fictional portraits of women. She has been focusing on the genre since 1997 — through her work, she explores themes of subjectivity and desire by producing composites of found images, mostly gathered from fashion magazines.Listen to Janet discuss her journey, her sources of inspiration as well as the challenges she’s faced as a Canadian visual artist with our podcast host Eva Hartling!