Nellie's Birthday, 1981. Nellie Mae Rowe. Colored pencil, crayon, and graphite on paper. Gift of Souls Grown Deep Foundation from the William S. Arnett Collection, 2014. © 2022 Nellie Mae Rowe / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.Filled with bright patterns, verdant vegetation, stylized figures, and somewhat indistinct, hybridized animals, Rowe’s fanciful and exuberant imagery offers a view into a private pictorial universe. Nellie’s Birthday exemplifies her unique conflation of fantasy and autobiography. The artist executed this drawing to commemorate her eighty-first birthday, which, owing to her cancer diagnosis earlier that year, she thought would be her last. On the left side of the composition, a Tree of Life (a recurring motif in her work) appears near a figure looking over a grave marker bearing Rowe’s name.