Celebrating Illinois Women Artists

suitably for her role.2 She read voraciously and could talk on many topics, yet her peculiar presence made a sustained conversation difficult.3 Not surprisingly, in her continuous search for herself, she appears frequently in her own paintings. She painted her striking self-portrait, shown here, in a magical realism style in 1936. She places herself close to us, consuming most of the painting surface, which gives the painting a sense of intimacy that is immediately dispelled by her transfixed gaze. Seemingly absorbed in her own dreams, she makes us feel as though we are intruding upon a private moment.4 Her works are personal visions applied to canvas and paper with technical skill and a colorist's sentiment, unaffected by chang-