Margaret Keane Biography

Margaret D. H. Keane (born Peggy Doris Hawkins, September 15, 1927) is an American artist. Creator of the "big-eyed waifs", Keane is famous for drawing paintings with big eyes, and mainly paints women, children and animals in oil or mixed media. While the work achieved commercial success through inexpensive reproductions on prints, plates and cups, it has been critically dismissed as kitsch. One reviewer pointed to its ubiquity in discount stores: "They hung in Woolworth's, next to the velvet Elvis, or maybe it was Walgreen's, by the clowns."