
Betye Saar. Palm of Love. 1966
Artist, Betye Saar: Hello, my name is Betye Saar. Welcome to my exhibit, The Legends of Black Girl’s Window. Walk with me through this exhibition and I will tell you a little bit about quite a few of the pieces. The first piece is the Palm of Love. This is one of my early etchings. I have always been interested in mysticism and In palmistry and phrenology So this is an early etching, in the 1960s, of my palm, and then a diagram of a palmistry chart.
I've always been curious about things that I don't really understand, and in Los Angeles we had sometimes gypsies that lived in the area I lived. And they would have their handprints on their building where fortunes were read. I was always interested in that handprint and the palmistry chart, and as I got older, I used it as part of my visual language.