Mary-Kay Lombino

March 6, 2019.

Mary-Kay Lombino, Curator of Collections at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College, talks about her exhibition Freehand: Drawings by Inez Nathaniel-Walker, on view February 1 - April 14 at the Center.

Inez Nathaniel-Walker (1907–1990) made her first works of art while she was serving a sentence at a maximum-security prison for killing a man by whom she had been abused. While in prison she began to draw, creating remarkable portraits of her fellow inmates whom she called “bad girls.” Her richly patterned works combine meticulous detail and playful simplicity, forming expressive depictions of her subjects’ personalities and physical attributes. Freehand is Walker’s first one-person museum exhibition. The exhibition is supported by the Friends of the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Exhibition Fund and organized with the cooperation of the American Folk Art Museum, New York.