One of Cumbria and the UK’s leading female artists has been named among the top 10 feminist artists of all time.

Margaret Harrison has been ranked alongside Frida Kahlo and Cindy Sherman by Artlyst, an online gallery and magazine for contemporary art.

Artlyst says: “Men have maintained a studio system which has excluded women from training as artists, a gallery system that has kept them from exhibiting and selling their work, as well as from being collected by museums. Although this is somewhat less in recent years.”

Ms Harrison agrees that the situation has improved for women artists, though the Government has made matters worse.

She explains: “The current policy by this Government in the arts in the UK, including the high fees for students, is going to put many young women off from going to art school.

“Already my colleagues teaching in those institutions are telling me that the majority of students are from wealthy backgrounds, and although students from all backgrounds have something to give it’s the intermingling that produces interesting work.

“I think there is a return to a rigid class-based system; hopefully we are not going as far as art as hobby.

“Although my family was middle class I think if I was considering an art career today it wouldn’t be possible.

“Class plays a bigger part in success in the UK, which is not the case in the US.”

Ms Harrison studied at the Carlisle College of Art from 1957 to 1961 and then the Royal Academy Schools, London.

She founded the London Women’s Liberation Art Group in 1970.

The following year, an exhibition of her work was closed by the police for its “pornographic” depiction of men. The show included a picture of Hugh Hefner as a naked bunny girl.

She is married to Cumbrian artist Conrad Atkinson and the pair divide their time between homes in Burgh by Sands and California.

Ms Harrison, who is currently in the US, says: “The gallery system usually favours men with a few exceptions.

“The main galleries I work with are in Berlin and New York – I have been fortunate to show with these open minded galleries.

“The gallery I was showing with in London no longer has a physical space but still works with me.

“I was fortunate to have my work bought by public galleries including the V&A, Tate and the Arts Council, the latest being MIMA.

“None of the museums in Cumbria have anything by myself. I think I am a little invisible in Cumbria anyway.

“For the last eight years I seem to have become more visible again ( I had a lot of attention in the 1970s/80s) both internationally and nationally and with that it has brought more private sales, mainly in Germany and France.

“There seems to be a sense that women of my generation might have something about them that influenced the mainstream, so there is a re-examination of some of us.

“The current art world madness of inflated prices will probably crash at some point with the Chinese and Russians cooling off.

“It is a bit like Pop Idol – one minute you are hot, the next gone. So it is a matter of surviving short-lived fashions.

“It is a great honour to be rated alongside Frida Kahlo.

“She made a great breakthrough in a very macho society with really terrific work.

“I was pleased to see Cindy Sherman there. She was showing in NY at the same time as I showed at the New Museum in NY in 1989. It’s good to see she has continued to have a prominent presence with her unusual work.”