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Cathy Curtis is the author of two previous biographies of women artists, RESTLESS AMBITION: GRACE HARTIGAN, PAINTER (Oxford University Press, 2015) and A GENEROUS VISION: THE CREATIVE LIFE OF ELAINE DE KOONING (Oxford University Press, 2017). Her next book will be a biography of the novelist and essayist Elizabeth Hardwick. Curtis was elected to a two-year term as president of Biographers International Organization in 2018. Her website is www.cathycurtis.net
ALIVE STILL: NELL BLAINE, AMERICAN PAINTER (Oxford University Press) is the story of an artist who believed she was at the top of her game in 1959, when she traveled to Greece to paint. She had a great time . . . until she contracted the most severe form of polio and had to be airlifted to New York. A paraplegic at age thirty-seven, she was determined to regain her skills. Her coloristically brilliant, rhythmically vibrant style illuminated landscapes and still lifes that reflect her passion for the natural world. During the next three decades she would become a notable painter and one of America’s great watercolorists. In 1974, she purchased a cottage on Ledge Road, where she and her lover, painter Carolyn Harris, made the most of the splendid views available on Cape Ann.