Gay Fraker Held (b.1955, Chicago, Illinois) has enjoyed a distinguished artistic career spanning more than five decades of creative dedication. Originally trained as a printmaker, with formal degrees in both printmaking and drawing, their early work throughout the 1980s and into the late 1989s was dominated by works on paper and represented by galleries in Chicago.

By the 1990s, they returned to painting and began exhibiting in Massachusetts, where they were spending half the year. Now based full-time in Chicago once again, Held’s work reflects a deep engagement with the present moment.