Mattie in the Morning Glories
Mattie Lou O'Kelley
American, 1908–1997

Details
Title
Mattie in the Morning Glories
Artist/Maker
Mattie Lou O'Kelley (American, 1908–1997)
Date
1992
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
39 1/8 x 27 3/8 inches
Credit
T. Marshall Hahn Collection
Accession #
1996.30
Location
Currently not on view
Although she is best known for her memory paintings, Mattie Lou O’Kelley often painted subjects from life. This is the eighty-four-year-old artist’s matter-of-fact representation of herself. The composition’s symmetrical, flattened forms and the subject’s rigid pose and solemn expression evoke the work of the limner painters, self-taught portraitists of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America. Assisted by the figure's geometric simplicity, the trio of astringent green, pink, and yellow disrupts what might otherwise be a cloying scene.
Image Copyright
© (c) Mattie Lou O'Kelley Memorial Trust