Peggy Dee

Gloria’s Knife w/ Red Fish
acrylic on paper
42 x 30 in.

My mother began crying one Sunday afternoon in 1950 and couldn’t stop. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalized. She was brutally murdered by an inmate at Chicago State Hospital 10 years later when I was thirteen. The sorrow I have felt over missing her all of my life and her unimaginable suffering has fueled my most recent body of work. My paintings are about my desire to have a female figure at home and my desire to see her defend herself both physically and emotionally. Her inclusion into my work has been unconscious and intuitive.

© Peggy Dee