Born: 1912, United States
Died: 1981
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from HistoryLink.org, in line with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The six founders of Women Painters of Washington were Myra Albert Wiggins (1869-1956), Elizabeth Warhanik (1880-1968), Lily Norling Hardwick (1890-1944), Dorothy Dolph Jensen (1895-1977), Anna B. Stone (1869-1950), and Helen Bebb (1878-1947), who acted as an administrator and was not an active painter.
Another artist associated with the Washington state WPA was Helder’s friend and fellow Precisionist, Blanche Morgan Losey (1912-1981). Unlike Helder, Losey ‘s involvement in the WPA was as a stage and set designer for the local Federal Theater Projects and most notably, the Negro Repertory Unit.
Like Helder, Losey’s watercolors utilized a crisp, hard-edged realism that she exhibited locally and in exhibitions sponsored by the National Association of Women Artists, based in New York. Her painting style segued into Surrealism in the 1940s with many of the paintings depicting elements of her conflicted identity and abusive marriage.