"Margaret D. H. Keane (born Peggy Doris Hawkins; September 15, 1927) is an American artist. Creator of the "big eyed waifs", which feature children with large eyes. Keane is famous for drawing paintings with big eyes and mainly paints women, children, and animals in oil or mixed media. Margaret Keane's paintings are recognizable by the oversized, doe-like eyes of her subjects. Keane says she was always interested in the eyes and used to draw them in her school books. She began painting her signature "Keane eyes" when she started painting portraits of children. "Children do have big eyes. When I’m doing a portrait, the eyes are the most expressive part of the face. And they just got bigger and bigger and bigger" Keane said. Keane focused on the eyes, as they show the inner person more. Keane attributes Amedeo Modigliani's art as one of the major influence in the way she paints women since 1959. Other artists who influenced her in use of color, dimension and composition include Van Gogh, Gustav Klimt, and Picasso. In the 1960s, Keane became one of the most popular and successful artists of the time. Andy Warhol said "I think what Keane has done is just terrific. It has to be good. If it were bad, so many people wouldn't like it." During this time her artwork was sold under the name of her husband, Walter Keane, who claimed credit for her paintings. In the height of the artworks' popularity, she was painting non-stop for 16 hours a day. In 1970, Keane announced on a radio broadcast, she was the real creator of the paintings that had been attributed to her ex-husband Walter Keane. After Keane revealed the truth, a "paint-out" between Margaret and Walter was staged in San Francisco's Union Square, arranged by Bill Flang, a reporter from the San Francisco Examiner and attended by the media and Margaret. Walter did not show up. In 1986, she sued both Walter and USA Today in federal court for an article claiming Walter was the real artist. ... " Wikipedia undefined

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