Quick Facts
Biography
Myrtice West (1923–2010) was an American self-taught painter.
West née Snead was born in Cherokee County, Alabama, on September 14, 1923. In 1940 she married Wallace West, with whom she had one child. She started painting in the early 1950s. Over a seven-year period in the 1970s, West created a series of 14 paintings based on the Book of Revelation.
Her work was included in the 1991 exhibition Outsider Artists of Alabama sponsored by the Alabama State Council on the Arts (ASCA). This brought attention and interest in her work. In 1996 her work Ezekiel Ch. 31 was included in the exhibition "TRee of Life" at the American Visionary Art Museum. In 1999 a book about her Revelation series, entitled Wonders to Behold: The Visionary Art of Myrtice West was published by Mustang Publishing (ISBN 0914457993).
She died on April 12, 2010, in Centre, Alabama. Her paper are in the Art & Artist files at the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library.
