From the National Portrait Gallery to the White House

Alice's reputation was forged over decades of serious, celebrated portraiture. Her paintings have hung in some of the most prestigious institutions and private collections in America, including the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Her portrait of Chelsea Clinton hung in the White House during President Bill Clinton's administration — a landmark commission that speaks to both the quality and cultural resonance of her work.

Her subjects have included some of the most iconic figures of the twentieth century. She painted Betty Friedan, the pioneering feminist author and activist, capturing with characteristic precision the fire and intellect behind one of history's great minds. She painted Beatrice Wood — the legendary Ojai potter, Dadaist, and centenarian artist known as the "Mother of Dada" — creating a portrait that honored a kindred spirit, a woman who also refused to let age define the boundaries of her creativity.

Alice's portraiture earned her a place in Who's Who in American Art, a recognition that places her among the most significant visual artists working in the United States. 

The Art of Aging: A Collaborative Vision That Changed the Conversation

Perhaps Alice's most widely recognized body of work is The Art of Aging — a nationally acclaimed collaborative project created with her husband, author and therapist Richard Matzkin. Equal parts fine art collection, philosophical inquiry, and documentary, The Art of Aging reframes the aging process not as decline or irrelevance, but as a journey toward wholeness, wisdom, and spiritual richness.

Alice Matzkin's work drew the attention of national media at the highest levels — including a celebrated segment on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2001, where her landmark book and project The Art of Aging introduced millions of viewers to her philosophy that aging is a rich, complex, deeply beautiful stage of human life.

Love, Loss, and the Fire That Changed Everything

Alice stopped creating while she was raising her children. Then, at 42 years old, everything changed. She met Richard Matzkin — author, jazz drummer, sculptor, and the great love of her life — and the encounter was, by her own account, anything but subtle. Riding together on the Santa Monica Freeway, Richard took her hand and told her she was beautiful. What followed, Alice laughs, was an entirely uncharacteristic make-out session in a parking lot. It was the beginning of a partnership — creative, spiritual, romantic — that has now spanned more than 33 years and produced some of the most meaningful work of both their lives.

Their Ojai home and shared studio is filled with the artifacts of that rich, layered life: Buddha statues, faded photographs with Hillary Clinton and Beatrice Wood, portraits of family members painted at their deathbeds, a Who's Who in American Art citation — a space that breathes with memory, meaning, and the accumulated beauty of two deeply lived lives. Alice has credited their love, consistently and without hesitation, as the force that truly "woke up" her art.

But life, even a beautiful one, delivers its blows.

In late 2017, the catastrophic Thomas Fire tore through Ventura County and destroyed 100 of Alice's paintings stored in a shed outside their home. Among the losses were irreplaceable family pictures and the beloved portraits of older people that had formed the visual and emotional spine of The Art of Aging — the very work that had earned her an Oprah appearance and changed how a generation thought about growing older. The loss was staggering by any measure. Alice responded with the kind of dark, grounded humor that speaks to a spirit that cannot be broken: at least, she noted, her children would not have to worry about what to do with all those paintings after she was gone.

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic — years of isolation that compounded the grief of the fire's destruction and pushed Alice into an extended creative fallow period. She stopped making art entirely. For an artist of her stature and productivity, it was a striking, painful silence.

The Voice That Called Her Back

Then, roughly two years before the Los Angeles Times profiled her remarkable comeback in September 2025, something shifted.

Alice was sweeping the floor of her Ojai home — an ordinary domestic moment — when she heard what she describes as an internal voice, clear and insistent, telling her simply to go to the studio and do something. Anything. Without worrying about the outcome.

With most of her supplies gone, destroyed in the fire or depleted in the years since, she found what remained: black charcoal paper and pastels. She sat down and began drawing in a free, stream-of-consciousness style she had never attempted before. No plan. No subject. No expectation.

She completed eight pieces in just a few days. She could not stop.

That spontaneous creative eruption gradually, organically evolved into something she had never done before in her long and celebrated career: large-scale abstract painting. Working on bigger canvases, freed entirely from the discipline and conventions of portraiture, Alice began producing work that surprised even herself — wild, vivid, layered paintings that she describes as "bizarre," "totally not boring," and endlessly surprising.

By the time the Los Angeles Times covered her story in September 2025, Alice had completed 55 abstract works. Several were on display at the beloved Farmer and the Cook café and market in Ojai, introducing her transformed artistic vision to a new and enthusiastic audience.

The Abstract World of Alice Matzkin

Her new abstract paintings represent a radical and thrilling departure from everything Alice had built her career on — and simultaneously feel like its most natural evolution.

The canvases can be displayed in four different orientations, each revealing a different visual experience. They reward the patient, curious viewer with hidden imagery that Alice herself discovers only after the painting is finished — not planned, not placed intentionally, but emerging from the subconscious and the paint: birds of paradise, galaxies, floating stairways, and even an octopus, rising from layers of color and gesture like dreams surfacing from deep water.

It is perhaps the most honest description of what Alice Matzkin's art has always done — not imposed a vision onto the world, but listened for what the world, and the paint, and the moment, wanted to say.

As a proud member of the Ojai Studio Artists — the distinguished collective that draws art lovers from across California and beyond to its celebrated Open Studio Tour each year — Alice continues to show, create, and inspire. Her listings and exhibitions through ojaistudioartists.org connect collectors, galleries, and enthusiasts to her evolving body of work.

Her work has been covered extensively by the Los Angeles Times across multiple decades — from a 1997 feature to a 2011 travel piece highlighting Ojai's vibrant arts scene, to the landmark 2025 profile of her creative renaissance. She has also been featured in the Ojai Valley News, whose description of her work — that Alice's brush "bursts with life after loss" — remains one of the most perfect phrases ever written about her.

Archives & Institutional Recognition

Honored by The Focus on the Masters Art Archive Library

focusonthemasters.com/alice-matzkin

Alice Matzkin is among the distinguished artists permanently documented in the Focus on the Masters (FOTM) Archive — a Ventura County-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the lives and legacies of working professional artists through in-depth documentation, oral histories, and archival research. Alice's documentation took place in 2005 and was generously sponsored by Paula Spellman.

The FOTM Archive contains extensive information about Alice, including documentation of her celebrated series:

• "Women of Age" — portraits born from interviews Alice conducted with women age 70 and older, capturing lives lived with passion and creativity
• "Naked Truth" — a fearless series depicting women aged 58 to 87 without clothes and without shame, challenging every cultural convention about the female body and time
• "Aunt Kitty" — a deeply personal series documenting her aunt's physical transformation between the ages of 89 and 97, offering viewers a profound meditation on acceptance, grace, and the final stages of life

Alice's husband, sculptor Richard Matzkin, was also documented by FOTM in 2010, making them one of the rare couples in the archive — a testament to the depth and significance of their shared creative legacy.

"Aunt Kitty's gracious attitude about the acceptance of her bodily changes gives Matzkin and those who study her work more peace about the final stages of life." — Focus on the Masters Archive

Podcast Features & Community Recognition

Honored by Women Over 70

womenover70.com — Episode 200: Alice Matzkin: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self

Alice Matzkin was featured as a guest on the Women Over 70 podcast — a milestone Episode 200 — in a conversation dedicated to celebrating the authentic aging self. The episode reflects everything Alice has spent her career arguing through paint: that women over 70 are not invisible, not diminished, and not finished. They are, in many ways, just arriving.

Key highlights from her Women Over 70 recognition include:

• Two paintings in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution
• Her portrait of Chelsea Clinton hanging in the White House during the Clinton administration
• Recognition in Marquis Who's Who of American Art
• Her celebrated appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show
• Co-authorship with Richard Matzkin of The Art of Aging: Celebrating the Authentic Aging Self — available on Amazon

"Every age has its own beauty inside and out. Our body is our vehicle of transportation, abode to our senses, and home to our mind and spirit. We are ageless beings and a true miracle of the universe. Young or old, we have the ability to create beauty and contribute to the world." — Alice Matzkin

Media Coverage & Press Features

Featured in the Los Angeles Times

Alice Matzkin Takes Artistic Turn After Finding New Inspiration Los Angeles Times — September 16, 2025

In one of the most significant profiles of her career, the Los Angeles Times chronicled Alice Matzkin's extraordinary creative renaissance — her return to art after the Thomas Fire of 2017 destroyed approximately 100 of her paintings, and after the long creative silence of the COVID-19 pandemic. The piece documents Alice's unexpected pivot from portraiture into bold, large-scale abstract painting — 55 canvases born from a moment of inner guidance and a box of charcoal pastels.

Key details from the Los Angeles Times profile:

• Alice's portrait of Chelsea Clinton hung in the White House during the Clinton presidency
• Portraits of Betty Friedan and Beatrice Wood featured in the National Portrait Gallery
• Her Art of Aging work was the subject of an Oprah segment in 2001
• She met her husband Richard Matzkin at age 42, famously falling in love on the Santa Monica Freeway
• Her 55 new abstract paintings were exhibited at the Farmer and the Cook café and market in Ojai
• Alice, now 85, describes her new work as "bizarre, wild, and totally not boring"

This article stands as the definitive contemporary document of Alice Matzkin's artistic evolution and enduring creative vitality.

Featured in the Ojai Valley News

Alice Matzkin's Brush Bursts with Life After Loss Ojai Valley News

The Ojai Valley News — the heartbeat of Alice's home community — captured her story with the kind of intimate, local knowledge that only a community paper can bring. Their description of Alice's creative comeback is among the most evocative phrases ever written about her work: that her brush "bursts with life after loss."

As a beloved and deeply rooted member of the Ojai arts community, Alice's story resonated powerfully with local readers who have watched her grow, grieve, and emerge transformed. The Ojai Valley News coverage reinforces Alice's identity not just as a nationally recognized artist, but as a cherished local creative voice whose studio and spirit are woven into the cultural fabric of Ojai, California.

Cultural & Advocacy Recognition

Featured in the Old Women's Project

oldwomensproject.org/alice.htm

Alice Matzkin's work has been recognized and celebrated by the Old Women's Project — a grassroots cultural advocacy organization dedicated to amplifying the voices, stories, and visibility of older women in American life. Her inclusion in this project reflects the deep alignment between Alice's artistic mission and the broader cultural movement to reclaim the dignity, power, and beauty of women as they age.

The Old Women's Project feature places Alice in a lineage of artists, activists, and visionaries who refuse to accept cultural invisibility as the price of growing older — women whose voices grow not quieter, but clearer, bolder, and more necessary with each passing year. Alice's fearless series "Naked Truth" — depicting women aged 58 to 87 without clothes and without shame — is perhaps the most direct visual expression of exactly what the Old Women's Project stands for.

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