Seven Painters, 14 Revealing Portraits
by Ellen Edwards

The Miami Herald
January 29th, 1978

Look at a portrait and you see more than the person.

You see a relationship between the person and the painter. Or, in a self-portrait, you see the image the artist has of himself.

It can be as revealing as a view through an open window, or as closely guarded as a state secret.

Either way, it is more than a combination of line and color and shape. It is human flesh and soul.

Portraits, some of self, some of friends, are on exhibit at the Virginia Miller Gallery through Feb. 8 in a show called "Women Artists Paint Women Artists."

SEVEN WOMEN each have two portraits exhibited. And although the fact that they are all artists is emphasized in the organization of the exhibition, none are pictured in the act of making art.

The painters have transcended the need to define the women they are painting by the accoutrements of their work. Rather, they know each other so well that there is no need for the outer details to overwhelm the inner person.

Lilly Brody, Elaine de Kooning, Rosalyn Drexler. Dorothy Gillespie, Marcia Marcus, Alice Neel and Selina Trieff have portraits here. Brody, Marcus, Drexler, Gillespie and Trieff have each painted self-portraits that are particularly telling.

Gillespie, for instance, has painted herself head-on, unsmiling, nothing the way she is in person. She is an abstract painter, and touches of her pastel trapezoids come through in the way she handles the paint here, as they do in her portrait of painter and friend Alice Baber.

LILLY BRODY, in her 70s or 80s depending on where you get your information, has painted nearly transient images of herself on thin handmade paper in watercolors.

You have to think, from that portrait, that Neel has an ambivalent relationship with Brody. She paints her severely, allowing little emotion to come through, on the verge of being sharply critical of her friend.

This is just the opposite of what Neel does in her portrait of Dorothy Gillespie, which is compassionate and warm, making Gillespie look almost saintly. Gillespie is pictured with her hand open and placed flat against her body just below her neck. She is smiling as though waiting for the halo to be placed on her head.

Brody is devilish, although not threatening, her hands gnarled, her wrinkles carefully drawn, thrusting forward out of the canvas.