This website is subtitled Breaking the Rules, also the subtitle of Flack's Retrospective by Gouma-Peterson, because Flack has consistently gone against the norm in her work, style, and medium, as well as personally.

In an interview in Art Talk (Nemser 261), Flack discusses some of the obstacles she has encountered as a woman artist. She began her career as an abstract expressionist, during a time when artists were intent of proving their masculinity. Flack discussed meeting guest artists while a student who could "only relate to [her] as female. There is no doubt in my mind that if I had been a male student I would have been treated differently. I don't know how much better but certainly not in a sexist way" (Nemser 263). Flack was treated as a sex object: she was asked to be an artist and play a game in order to be accepted. She would play the role of an artist, but was not willing to compromise herself to be accepted by the men.  Women students who aspired to be professional artists were not taken seriously, and Flack had to be very committed to withstand those pressures and still succeed. 

Flack abandoned abstract expressionism for realism following her education at Cooper Union. She believes that people desire to understand their environment, and she felt a need to draw realistically and take things a step further in her artwork. Her innovative ideas of realism were used by a group of artists to which she belonged, yet she was not credited for the work. She had to sign her work without her first name to be accepted (Nemser 266). 

I believe these hardships played a large role in leading Flack to her truly individualistic style. Though she is naturally independent and inquisitive, these characteristics were likely enhanced by the necessity to work harder than others to prove herself as a woman and as an artist. 

The next example of Flack breaking the rules of art is her use of a photograph as subject of her work, introducing her to the genre of photorealism. She did not disguise that she was using a photograph, leading her to be further isolated from the art world. Yet still her originality cam through. Her subjects were also novel: she depicted political scenes during a tumultuous time (such as Kennedy Motorcade and Sisters of the Immaculate Conception). She also began painting important women she considered beautiful not necessarily in the traditional, stereotypical context, but those were intelligent and strong. In this way, she was challenging the notion of beauty and opening it to include what is inside instead of just external appearance.

Within the world of photorealism, Flack successfully adds a sense of life to her works that is not found in the original photograph. She does not just paint beautiful works; she includes ideas on the human condition, love and suffering (see World War II and Marilyn). In projecting slides of her subjects onto a large canvas, Flack is also innovative. She doesn't believe that lines exist in the real world (Flack 44). By painting in this way, she eliminates the need for drawing and therefore line, and thus produces works more grounded in reality. Flack's sense of color is also interesting. She doesn't see color as a material substance, but rather as a system of wavelengths. This view contributes the vibrancy of colors in her work (see Crayola)

It is not just in photorealism that Flack has been important. She moved to sculpture in the early 1980's, and her work introduced what has been referred to as a new concept of woman (Mathews 89). Flack brings out the beauty in her subjects, mainly women. She sculpts goddesses and deities, not as sex objects but as strong capable women. She includes contrasts and multiple references in her work. Some, such as the Egyptian Rocket Goddess, include concepts both masculine and feminine (with the phallic and snake symbols). The models for these works were not passive; they actively participated in the development of the post and added to the sense of bodily presence in Flack's work (Mathews 91).  Flack strives to make her work universal and something to which everyone can relate, masculine and feminine, young and old. 

I believe Flack's work to be more feminist than feminine. She paints and sculpts beauty and also politics and society. Most photorealist artists paint unemotional subjects such as cars and motorcycles (masculine subjects). Flack, however, paints highly emotional works, both for herself and for her audience. She is bold in her work itself and how she creates it. Though her subjects are often feminine, they are strong and capable. Flack's works are very real and grounded. She has succeeded in two different mediums, and both have added to the art world.

“Art is a powerful force in the world,” Audrey Flack has stated. “It is the visual representation of what we think and what we feel, and of how we think and how we feel” (Hurwitz 441). Flack has presented presented a changing view of the woman, has been innovative in medium and style, and had been a major contributor to the art world.