Born: 1912, United States
Died: 1956
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.
A noted painter and muralist in the Northwest, Peggy Strong (1912-1956), was born in Aberdeen and studied at the University of Washington with additional studies in the East. In 1933, Strong had been seriously injured in an automobile accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down. However, her physical limitations did not hinder her activities. Her large-scale murals were painted in the studio with the assistance of a hand-operated elevator, designed by her engineer father, allowing her to work independently. She exhibited nationally in New York as well as at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Exposition in 1939. Her easel paintings almost always focus on the human figure, either portraiture or in powerful works that display a sensitivity to social issues.
Strong worked briefly in San Francisco before her untimely death at 44. Her extant murals include The Saga of Wenatchee at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center and Paul Bunyan Themes now housed at the University of Puget Sound.