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When Chicago-based painter Hollis Sigler (born 1948) was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1985, her themes became more personal, confronting ideas about body image, heredity, illness, mortality, and hope. Her mature artistic style is faux-na ve, featuring paintings whose subjects, furniture, and clothing set in doll-house type interiors and suburban landscapes, are stand-ins for the implicitly female figure. In 1992, she began the critically acclaimed series, The Breast Cancer Journal, composed of oil paintings, oil pastel drawings, cut paper collages, monotypes, and lithographs. The artist incorporates handwritten medical research as well as personal diary entries directly on the frames and borders of each piece, conveying her own spiritual and emotional journey as a breast cancer patient. She teaches at Columbia College, Chicago. Sigler earned a BFA from Moore College of Art, Philadelphia and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.