Lee Godie referred to herself as a French Impressionist painter. She lived life her way. We sadly never met her, but I became interested in her work in the early 1990’s when I found out she and I shared a birthday. I had an understanding for the kind of person she was and loved our shared fondness for dress up.
Her paintings are delicate portraiture and her materials simple with inks, watercolors, and fingernail polish on some paper but many window shades taken from the tenement hotels she would stay in during the cold days of Chicago.
Her life is a mystery, but it is known that she was born in 1908 with the name Jamot Emily Godee into a largest family of Christian Scientists. She had two husbands and four children in her lifetime.
She was a prolific painter and valued her own work often selling it on the steps of the Art Institute of Chicago.
There is a beautiful story of a daughter finding Lee and getting to know her by spending time with her on the streets. She finally revealed herself as her daughter and Lee replied, “yeah I know who you are, now pick up those things and let’s get going”.
The lost daughter was near to her when she passed in 1994 and even painted Lee as she would herself with rosy cheeks in her casket.

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