Portrait in the Mirror
20th Century Oil and Collage
#C8939
$3,900$2,730
Marion Seawell
This oil and collage on canvas portrait is by Northern California artist Marion Seawell (1928-2017). Seawell was a painter and writer whose work blended autobiography, humor, and psychological depth. Born in Yakima and raised in Walla Walla, Washington, she later studied with California artist Henrietta Shore before attending the San Francisco Art Institute. At nineteen she moved to Big Sur, where living with the Fassett family during the creation of the Nepenthe restaurant sparked what she called her transformation into a “wild Bohemian.” In the early 1950s she spent two years in New York, moving through the city’s art circles. Seawell spent most of her adult life in San Francisco, where she worked as a meticulous bookkeeper while maintaining a private, autobiographical studio practice. Her symbolic paintings and drawings often used animals and childhood memories to explore emotional truths. Her popular 1971 drawing Pyramid of Cats became widely reproduced and entered the Achenbach Foundation at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Her dual creative identities—right-handed painter and left-handed diarist “M.C. Wells”—came together in her candid 2008 monograph This Has Certainly Been a Lot of Fun. She spent her final years at The Redwoods in Mill Valley and died in 2017 at age 88, leaving a body of work marked by wit and self-reflection.
Late 20th Century
Oil & Collage on Canvas
46"x32" framed, 45"x31" unframed
Good vintage condition with a lot of patina and beautiful wear - flaking paint throughout. The painting has cleaned and newly-sealed with a fresh varnish to prevent any additional changes to the canvas. Framed in contemporary floater frame with matte burnished brass finish on the outer edges, and a metallic gold finish on the face.
