Alice Steer Wilson
Alice Steer Wilson expressed her love for the people and places
of Cape May through her brush. From the late 1960s until 2001,
she happily painted from life; perched on a sidewalk, seated in
her van, or in her last year, right from her porch. Affectionately
dubbed "Mrs. Cape May" by residents accustomed to seeing
her painting pictures of the "Painted Ladies", her love
for painting began in her youth on an Ohio farm and was fed by
childhood summers on Long Island Sound. She mastered a variety
of media and genres, including oil and watercolors. She received
her formal training at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
in, Philadelphia. Her work is collected inter nationally and has
received numerous awards.
 Shortly
after Alice died, a collector called to say he had discovered this
message, handwritten and signed, on the back of this painting as
he was having it reframed:
"In case my paintings are ever "discovered" after
I'm dead, this is my statement of what I was trying to do.
I loved the appearance of things, light particularly, and I
tried to copy it as accurately as I could, leaving out what
was boring and exaggerating what I liked. Why I loved certain
sights better than others I never understood, and neither do
the people who are explaining it to you now."
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| Alice Steer Wilson, circa 1975, offering oil
and charcoal portraits, still life and Cape May landscapes
from a shop at 404 Washington Street, Cape May. |
Signed, Alice Steer Wilson
1975, on the back of
“Windsor in September”
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Click
here for a complete artist's vita. |
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