Braida Stanley-Creek was a muralist, painter and draughtsman who lived in Farnham, Surrey. She was educated locally before attending Guildford Schools of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in central London part time from 1931-35. This self-portrait was completed during her time at the Slade. Even at this early phase in her artistic career its shows the calm gaze and centred repose of an assured draughtsman. Indeed, Creek won a certificate for draughtsmanship while at the Slade, continuing a long line of modern artists who used the Slade to hone their skill with a pencil before departing for more experimental territory, principally Augustus John, Gwen John, Stanley Spencer, David Bomberg, and Mark Gertler. From 1933 Stanley-Creek was member of the Women’s International Art Club, but she also showed at the Royal Academy, the Royal Scottish Academy, and the New English Art Club, where this work was first exhibited. She displays subtle variation of texture and tone across the patterned fabrics of her clothing, and a balance of colour between the scarlet of her scarf and lips and the midnight blue curtain in the background. Apart from showing the artist’s intuitive understanding of colour, light and form these bold characteristics signal her status as a modern artist working within the progressive traditionalism the NEAC represented in the 1930s. Later work by Stanley-Creek would remain figurative while evoking mythical or exotic spaces such as ‘Silver Shore’ and ‘Equator’. During the Second World War she settled in Mousehole, Cornwall where she turned to local fishermen and enclosed landscapes for subjects, drawing them into her escapist idiom. Occasionally she would make her own frames finding inspiration in the local Cornish traditions of craft. Sadly, not long after returning to Farnham during peacetime she died of a short illness before being able to fully establish herself as an artist. Frustrated in her attempts to do so by global conflict and only able to live a short life, this self-portrait stands as one of few remaining works by Stanley-Creek, and is a testament to her idiosyncratic vision which reflects with ease and refinement the aesthetic currents of her period.