Entirely self-taught, Muriel Kalish was born in a small Pennsylvania town in 1932. She moved to New York in 1950 and began to produce paintings that straddled the line between the naturalistic and the fantastic. Kalish’s paintings may be seen as windows into an intimate, enchanted world, where rich textiles, 19th century dolls, and religious iconography mingle together. The work of Kalish’s late period moved away from figurative imagery and towards still lives—each tableau of flowers or fruit rendered as a personal meditation on beauty and rebirth. Kalish’s paintings have appeared in solo exhibitions and museums throughout the country, including the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington D.C., the Galerie Brusberg in Germany and the Museum of Modern Art in New York