American artist Hollis Sigler lived and worked in Chicagoland, where she produced cryptic paintings and drawings in a colorful, intentionally unschooled style. This choice was Sigler’s feminist rejection of machismo and dismissal of the patriarchal emphasis on mastering the realist painting style taught in art school. Her paintings and works on paper are often surreal, theatrical, and highly allegorical. In 1985, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and, acknowledging that it would likely be a lifelong affliction, reoriented her art practice to engage with the disease. From the 1990s until her death in 2001, her work chronicled the emotional and psychological journey throughout this period of her life.

–Kevin McDonald, from the Glenstone Field Guide