Born in Austria, Bertha Halozan emigrated to the United States in 1954. She first went to Chicago to work as a nanny but was not happy and had trouble with English. She moved to New York to pursue a career as a singer and did facials at Helena Rubenstein. She then worked as a physical therapist at several venues and eventually gave up her career as a singer because “I got a lot of publicity but very little money.” She began painting in 1978 during her rehabilitation following a stroke.

Bertha generally painted repeated subjects – “a pigtailed, blue-eyed Statue of Liberty, surrounded by the busy activities of daily life in New York” often including the Goodyear blimp and a Mets baseball player, John Franco. She frequentl...