Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter

     Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter
                                                                      by Cathy Curtis
                                           Published January 19th 2015 by Oxford University Press

* I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley to review

To be honest I was hoping more in this biography as I am very interested in people especially in the arts, but this one was filled too much with facts and dates. Grace Hartigan, the person never seemed to be fleshed out enough for me and I was a bit bored throughout the book. I am an artist and I did appreciate the snippets of Grace's point of view and her approach to art but it was far and few between. On the positive, I enjoyed reading about Abstract Expressionism and the mention of several of the greats such as Jackson Pollock and De Kooning kept my interest.

I did find a mistake in the facts when the author referred to Walter Keene when she attributed the wide-wide waif paintings to him when in actuality the paintings were his wife, Margaret's paintings. He was plagiarizing her paintings and claimed them as his work. In the book, his name and the true facts about these paintings were inaccurate.

Ultimately I appreciate the research and the writing itself though I always need more beyond facts and details. Though I did get a sense of what the life of an artist during the 50's was like and over-all the book was worth the read.