April Waters’ installation Sheroes: Water, Women and the Environment, a collection of oil on canvas paintings on view through March 31 at Salem on the Edge gallery, is a tribute to the women she has admired and idolized — her “Sheroes” — and they are larger than life.

The pantheon includes her friend Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in the Iraq war; Maude Barlow, a water rights activist; journalist Amy Goodman, the host of Democracy Now!; Dr. Vandana Shiva, a leader in the anti-GMO, or genetically modified organism, movement; conservationist Wangari Maathai; Dr. Helen Caldicott, founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, which advocates for the abolition of nuclear weapons; and oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle.

Waters spent most of her life fighting for the issues and causes that speak to her. She has protested nuclear armament and energy and the Iraq War, and supports the feminists’ rights movement.

“I am an activist. I feel really strongly about the environment and women’s rights,” Waters, the Salem artist, said.

She didn’t start off as an activist. Like many people she had grave concerns and worries and cared deeply about many issues, but she had not yet begun to lift her voice until she left home.

“I come from Orange County, which used to be a very conservative area in California. I grew up in that culture and then I moved to Boulder, Colorado, which had a whole different culture, and I came into my own there,” she said.

“I found role models. I was a nurse and sort of bent towards caring for people, and at the time I was painting rivers and creeks and the environment, but then I was also starting to be inspired by particular individuals. I was finding an affinity to the people around me. They cared about women’s rights, they cared about Earth, and cooperative negotiations and just all kinds of things like that.

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“It was the ’80s and that’s when I started to hear about women like Helen Caldicott, who eventually started Physicians for Social Responsibility, but started out as a pediatrician treating children who were living around nuclear power plants and were coming up with childhood diseases, and she was correlating those two. And I just listened to her and thought, wow, I’m learning a lot from this woman about the Earth,” Waters said.

“So, women leaders have had an impact on me.”

These women inspired Waters, and because of their commitment and sacrifice to do what was right, she has felt inspired to stand up for the things she believes in. Sharing these women’s stories through her art is her part of how she demonstrates her commitment to those causes.

Each image takes her six months to paint. The task is enormous, as are the paintings. They are each 6 feet 6 inches by 5 feet. The subjects are painted from mid-torso up and have a forward-facing gaze. It is the gaze that dominates the paintings.

These women stare frankly out of the paintings, looking the viewer in the eye, demanding recognition. They are images of women painted by a woman. The male gaze is completely removed from the equation. This allows for a frank look at who and what they are. Most are past the bloom of youth.

Waters has captured them in middle age or older. She has painted their aged faces with grace and compassion, leaving out none of the marks that time has given them.

The style is realistic, but it includes a bit of play in the brush strokes which are only visible when closely studied. She has replaced age lines and wrinkles with brush strokes that simulate waves, tides and eddies.

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“Water is my current, my theme. I see that water here, and the other part that is really interesting is we’re taught we are 70 percent water. When I paint these faces, especially of older people, it’s like the earth and the waters are flowing. It’s flowing down the face, it’s flowing around the features, and you can see it like waves,” she said.

Waters’ subjects dominate the fore and middle ground, taking up nearly all the available space. The backgrounds provide some sort of clue as to the cause they championed, and almost all of these include a body of water of some kind, whether lake, river, ocean or bay, thematically tying the pieces together and creating a whole.

With this installation Waters has switched roles and become an inspiration for others, calling on all women to rise up and be counted.

This stance is political, and flies in the face of much current politics by forcing the viewer to see these women, and through them all women, as more than vessels. They are personifications of Athena with knowledge and wisdom, ready to fly in and fight for what is right. Casting her idols in this role and painting them larger than life, Waters has made the viewer see women as equals who are capable of saving the world.

Waters hopes that these paintings will move and motivate the people who view them.

“Whatever you’re interested in, do something to support it,” she said. “Care about something and do something. I want them to know that these women … they used a big part of their life to be sort of a pillar of holding up democracy. They thought about caring for our planet and caring for each other. They’re just like lifeguards.”

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Sheroes will be on exhibit until March 31 at Salem on the Edge, 156 Liberty St. N.E., Salem. Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays; and noon-4 p.m. Sundays.