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WOMEN HEROES
TEXT
ALICE VAN ESSEN
ILLUSTRATION
ANNE BENTLEY
“I drew this portrait of Alice Walker because I was starting
a personal project: painting female Pulitzer Prize winners,”
says painter and illustrator Anne Bentley who lives
in San Francisco in the US. “I admire her intellect and
activism, and the fact that she returned to the South in the
US to fight for Civil Rights. I’ve only read The Color Purple,
which is such a beautifully written story about the life of anAfrican-American woman growing up in the South. I think
I might have a special interest in reading novels set in the
South because I grew up in Alabama.
“This piece was drawn on my iPad. I use a lot of
layering, just as I do when painting with oils, so it’s a
similar process without waiting for the paint to dry.”
Bentleyworks.us; @annembentleyAlice Walker by Ae Bentley
American author and activist Alice Walker is best-known for her novel ‘The Color Purple’,
for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1983