Fearless Selma Waldman, 77, dies of cancer

Regina Hackett writes in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer that Selma Waldman, painter of blunt-force trauma, rape, degradation and murder, was practically unknown in Seattle art circles, even though she lived in the city since the early 1960s. “Her subjects tended to be tough, yet nobody holds such content against Leon Golub, Sue Coe or Michael Spafford…. Her support for the cause of the Palestinian people was unwavering and absolute, a stance that her son, Rainer Waldman Adkins, thinks of as embedded in the Jewish tradition of principled dissent. In Seattle, art dealers, critics and curators tended to avoid her. Fearlessly inventive, she deserved attention and support. Save for a few exceptions (the sculptor Phillip Levine, the painter David Allison), she got neither.” Read more.