Cathy Curtis
Cathy Curtis is the author of Alive Still: Nell Blaine, American Painter (Oxford University Press, 2019), A Generous Vision: The Creative Life of Elaine de Kooning (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter (Oxford University Press, 2015). A former staff writer at the Los Angeles Times, she majored in philosophy at Smith College and has a master's degree from the University of California, Berkeley. Curtis is a past president of Biographers International Organization (BIO).
Works

Alive Still: Nell Blaine, American Painter
In 1959, Nell Blaine was thirty-seven years old—a rising painter in New York whose vibrant personality put her at the center of a group of notable artists and poets—when she sojourned in Greece and developed a severe strain of polio that nearly ended her life. Airlifted to New York, she spent months in an iron lung before emerging as a paraplegic. Deciding to focus on regaining her painting skills rather than trying to relearn how to walk, she became one of America's great watercolorists. Nell's post-polio life was made possible by the devotion of the two women who were (successively) her lovers and her fierce determination to succeed, despite the rigors and frustrations of spending her days in a wheelchair.
A Generous Vision: The Creative Life of Elaine de Kooning
Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter
Awards and Recognition
- Restless Ambition was long-listed for the 2016 Plutarch Award for biography
Press and Media Mentions
- Boston Globe,"JFK Portrait Explained in New Elaine de Kooning Biography," January 30, 2018
- The New York Times Book Review, "The Shortlist/The Lives of Artists" (A Generous Vision), January 14, 2018
- The Wall Street Journal: Review: 'A Generous Vision,' January 6, 2017
- London Review of Books, Jenni Quilter, "The Real Thing," (review of Restless Ambition), April 21, 2016, p. 29.
- Sag Harbor Express, Helen A. Harrison, "Grace Under Pressure: An Artist's Life," June 25, 2015
- Baltimore Magazine (review of Restless Ambition and Q&A), June 2015
- The Wall Street Journal: Books: "A Studio of Her Own," May 23-24, 2015
- Washington Post Book World review: "An Artist's Talent, A Fighter's Spirit," April 12, 2015
- Woman's Art Journal (review of Restless Ambition), Fall/Winter 2015
- Booklist, starred review (Restless Ambition), February 2015
- WYPR interview (Restless Ambitio)
- The Key Reporter, Svetlana Alpers, "Life of the Mind" (Restless Ambition review), April 10, 2015