Tomorrow she will be 100. To mark the occasion, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts is throwing a birthday bash, and a retrospective of her work will open at the Hollis Taggert Galleries in New York. Never a slave to convention, Brodhead has lived and painted in Paris, Rome and Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Locally, she's made her mark by cofounding the Wayne Art Center and the Philadelphia chapter of Artist's Equity. Yes, she hired an architect to make sure the walls stayed put, but she wasn't about to let him build her another traditional Main Line home.
French doors leading to the terrace give it an indoor-outdoor European graciousness.
The kitchen's cherry-red countertops and backsplash continue the fearless march through the rainbow. Her early studies at the academy with renowned colorist Arthur Carles clearly had a profound impact. The two artists developed a mutual regard, and in later years Brodhead would often pick Carles up from his Chestnut Hill studio and drive him back to Wayne for critiquing sessions. That would have ruined everything. When she's trying to figure out where to go next in a painting, she sticks the transparent film on the canvas, paints a few brushstrokes, stands back and decides if she likes it.