Molly Schiff is an artist because she made it so.

Born in the Depression to an immigrant family on Chicago’s West Side, Molly Schiff was recognized for her artistic talents at a young age. Her father’s death at 16 thrust Schiff into managing the family’s knitwear business. Married at 19, a few years after graduating high school, Schiff started a family and settled into 1950s domesticity.

A decade later, keeping a home, raising four children, managing the family business, and sketching on the side, Schiff, in 1958, submitted a portfolio to the School at the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). She was accepted for the Fall semester. With this, Schiff began an artistic practice which wove its way into the rest of her full life. Her children began at the SAIC Junior school at the same time. Her family’s Rogers Park apartment became the salon-like center of her social circle.

From the start, Schiff’s work applied art school-disciplined technique to the scenes of her life—her in-law’s delicatessen, portraits of bystanders from family trips to the lakeshore.

But Schiff’s art not only reflected her life, it drove it.

Self-made, self-discovered.