Nell Painter came of age in the 20th century, when images of people like her – Black, female, dark-skinned, and self-consciously bookish – were rare. And even in her 21st-century art schools, she didn’t learn how to depict kindred images or how to satisfy a hunger for personal visibility. Her earliest self-portraits began as exercises in how to go about depicting a Black person in paint. Moments later, the sheer pleasure of playing with the appearance of a patient model who was always present took over, the sheer pleasure of experimenting with form and mediums – physical and digital – that offered its own payoff with an obliging model who didn’t bridle when the images disregarded her self-concept. Who knows what Nell actually looks like? Who cares!
Nell Irvin Painter is an author, artist, and historian, notable for her works on United States Southern history of the nineteenth century. She is retired from Princeton University as the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita. After her retirement from Princeton, Painter resumed her education with studies in the fine arts attending the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, and earned an MFA in painting from Rhode Island School of Design. She lives and works in East Orange, New Jersey.
