Rocking Chair

Rowe created Rocking Chair soon after her diagnosis of terminal cancer, which took her life a year later. Details, like her empty chair and wilting plants, represent the fading of life. Dolls and quilt-like grids nod to a reminiscence of youth. Rowe’s longing to play contrasts with her strenuous early life, spent working, marrying, and following societal norms placed on women. Her final ode, to youth and the joys of creative freedom, complicate these traditional gender formalities.

“I ain’t gone to school to learn no work like that. I guessed at it when I was a little gal, just lay down on the floor and draw. See, we had to go to fields, pick cotton and all like that. I didn’t have a chance like I have now… I just had to go get my pencil and draw something. That was in me and it’s still in me.” - Nellie Mae Rowe