These portraits are based on snapshots of people that I don't know, or didn't meet until decades after the photo was taken. Many of them are from found photographs, or pictures given to me by friends. They are all from the late 1940's to the early 1960's.
As a young woman, I was active in the feminist movement. I judged the lives of my female relatives, teachers, family friends and neighbors as limited, and I scorned the choices they made. The women in the pictures remind me of them. Now, I am in my mid-fifties, and I recognize the strength,
complexity and beauty of the women that came before me. They kept the world going through wars and depression, and they made it safe for my generation to question patriarchy and work for change.
Unfortunately, all the women that I knew from that era are dead. These paintings are my attempt to honor them, and a sort of apology for the arrogance of my youth.
