![\"PEACEPROPHET_2609270096.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791156618_574_.jpeg\")
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Peace Prophet, an unhoused African-American woman who paints every day, creates her work on the street \u2014 her studio shifting from the State Street Macy\u2019s to the nearby Blick Art Materials, where she buys most of her supplies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n Twenty minutes later, the woman straightens her 70-year-old frame, steps back and checks her work.<\/p>\n Only one passerby appears to notice the artist at work. The young woman, in a figure-hugging linen dress, regards the painter with a look of confused disapproval.<\/p>\n The passerby surely doesn\u2019t know that the artist wearing a floppy straw hat and a star-spangled black sweater in 92-degree heat is Peace Prophet, a homeless African-American woman who paints every day \u2014 her studio shifting from the State Street Macy\u2019s to the nearby Blick Art Materials, where she buys most of her supplies.<\/p>\n Nor would the young passerby likely know that Peace Prophet\u2019s work is framed, stacked and otherwise collected in homes across Chicago and beyond. Her work is in galleries and sold at art fairs. Some collectors own hundreds of her paintings.<\/p>\n Francis Fullam, who began collecting her work in 2012, estimates he\u2019s bought close to 1,000 pieces.<\/p>\n \u201cAt her best, some of her work is very compelling \u2014 it\u2019s fantastic. It\u2019s as good as any outsider artist\u2019s is,\u201d says Fullam, now retired from a marketing research job at Rush University Medical Center.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There is something \u201csoulful\u201d about the artist\u2019s work, and it has an \u201ceveryman\u201d quality to it, says Judith Racht, owner of an eponymous gallery that puts on an art fair where Peace Prophet\u2019s work has been sold. \u201cEven if we are not homeless, we feel alone \u2014 like she must feel.\u201d<\/p>\n Fullam uses the term \u201coutsider,\u201d referring to people who are self-taught. But that\u2019s only a guess. Like most people who encounter Peace Prophet, Fullam knows little about her past and how she came to be homeless.<\/p>\n Peace Prophet lives with a mental illness, her family says. A conversation might begin with her asking if you\u2019d like to buy a piece of her art and then rambles into a monologue of how she once starred in a film with Hollywood actor Lloyd Bridges and is, in fact, soon on her way to Los Angeles for the Academy Awards. Or how her family originally came from the Moroccan city of Marrakesh.<\/p>\n None of which turns out to be true. Details of her earlier life \u2014 both tragic and inspiring \u2014 came to light in early August, when a family member stumbled upon a YouTube<\/a> talk about Peace Prophet and then reached out to the lecturer.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Chances are, if you even occasionally head downtown, you have seen Peace Prophet. She\u2019s as much a fixture outside of the State Street Macy\u2019s as the smartly dressed Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses proffering copies of \u201cThe Watchtower\u201d magazine. Those who don\u2019t know Peace Prophet\u2019s self-chosen name may still know her as, say, \u201cthe homeless artist lady.\u201d<\/p>\n Because that\u2019s what she does. She paints. She draws. Constantly \u2014 like a fish that must keep swimming to stay alive.<\/p>\n \u201cI am drawn to people who express themselves unabashedly,\u2019\u201d says Nick Cappelletti, a Saugatuck, Michigan, art gallery owner who has sold Peace Prophet pieces for about the past five years.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n I first searched for Peace Prophet back on a chilly morning in early May. I had just seen her work for the first time at the Intuit Art Museum, an institution in West Town devoted to self-taught artists. Over the next four months, I sought to understand where she came from, why she lives on the streets and the source of her creativity.<\/p>\n Trying to find Peace Prophet can feel like chasing shadows. <\/p>\n \u201cI saw her yesterday,\u201d says a clerk at a downtown Staples, where she often gets free paper.<\/p>\n Try the Dunkin\u2019 Donuts in the subterranean Chicago Pedway, someone else suggests.<\/p>\n No luck.<\/p>\n \u201cShe\u2019s been on the street for 20 to 30 years because I\u2019ve been selling StreetWise since 1993. Homeless as a jaybird,\u201d says Lester Cherry, a vendor hawking the weekly magazine outside Macy\u2019s. Cherry hasn\u2019t seen Peace Prophet in several days. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Peace Prophet, an unhoused artist, stands outside of State Street Macy\u2019s and offers her painting for sale. Linsey Maughan, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Family & Support Services, says the agency has offered her services, but she has always refused. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Then on a muggy morning in late May, as downtown rattles to life, she appears \u2014 wearing a fleece jacket and a billowy dress. She\u2019s leaning against a bicycle rack in front of Macy\u2019s, her bags of supplies bunched beside her.<\/p>\n She reaches into one of the bags and tears several sheets from her sketch pad. She pulls out a plastic paint palette, moistening the colors with a dribble of water from an A&W Root Beer bottle.<\/p>\n She has no easel; she doesn\u2019t need one. Sometimes she rests her paper on top of an open bag or the sidewalk. Or she may simply drape it over the flat, tubular part of a bicycle rack. She doesn\u2019t talk while she\u2019s working. She rarely smiles.<\/p>\n She\u2019ll answer questions, to a point.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s $20,\u201d she says when I ask her how much for a painting that resembles a mosaic of jewel-toned glass shards.<\/p>\n I ask her if she feels safe living on the streets.<\/p>\n \u201cI pray every day before I go to bed, \u2018Please let me wake up,\u2019\u201d she says without any obvious emotion.<\/p>\n Ask too many questions, and she squints at you, as if the probing is beginning to hurt her eyes.<\/p>\n Then, unprompted, she presses her tongue against what appears to be her one good upper front tooth and says: \u201cI have to get my teeth done next Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Some people wonder if the world is taking advantage of Peace Prophet\u2019s talents. Even Fullam admits that her work might be worth more than what he pays, anywhere from $5 to $295 for a particularly large piece. He mostly pays her in art-supply gift cards, which she cashes at Blick\u2019s.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cShe was always painting, drawing, coloring,\u201d says her brother. \u201cShe wanted to go to France to study art.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOne of my worries is that no one is looking after her interests,\u201d Fullam says.<\/p>\n He pulls out two black Moleskine notebooks and holds one open. At the top, he\u2019s written, \u201cPP.\u201d Beneath that, he lists every painting (\u201cLarge woman with two groups of blue flowers,\u201d \u201cValentine theme on canvas\u201d), the date he bought it and how much he paid.<\/p>\n He didn\u2019t buy anything at first. For about a year, Fullam would hurry past the artist on his way to work, without even making eye contact.<\/p>\n One day, he noticed she was holding up a postcard-size painting.<\/p>\n \u201cI went up to her and said, \u2018How much is it?\u2019 She said, \u2018Whatever you want to give me,\u2019\u2019\u2019 Fullam recalls. \u201cI kept seeing her. I would bring [the paintings] home and my wife says, \u2018We don\u2019t have any more wall space.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n With a neatly clipped white mustache, pale skin and slicked-back thinning hair, Fullman brings to mind a British drill sergeant. He has a quiet voice and a teasing gleam in his eyes when he talks.<\/p>\n Asked why he has collected so many Peace Prophet paintings, he jokes: \u201cI don\u2019t drink. I don\u2019t smoke. I gave up the fountain pens.\u201d<\/p>\n Then, becoming serious, he says he both loves her work and wants to help someone who needs it.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Francis Fullam, pictured at his home in suburban Flossmoor, began collecting Peace Prophet\u2019s work in 2012. He estimates he owns close to 1,000 pieces. \u201cAt her best, some of her work is very compelling \u2014 it\u2019s fantastic. It\u2019s as good as any outsider artist\u2019s is,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n In years past, Fullam rented a booth to sell her paintings at an outsider art fair in Harbert, Michigan, just north of New Buffalo. The paintings, framed, sell for as much as $600, says Judith Racht, owner of the eponymous gallery that puts on the fair.<\/p>\n Racht says she currently has 10 Peace Prophet works on her gallery walls. There is something \u201csoulful\u201d about the artist\u2019s work, and it has an \u201ceveryman\u201d quality to it, Racht says.<\/p>\n Peace Prophet\u2019s works taps into the sense of isolation that all humans feel at one time or another, she says.<\/p>\n \u201cEven if we are not homeless, we feel alone \u2014 like she must feel,\u201d Racht says.<\/p>\n Cherie Giller bought a Peace Prophet female portrait at Nick Cappelletti\u2019s gallery.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like when I was walking around the room looking at all the other pictures he had on display, it was like her eyes kept following me,\u201d Giller says. \u201cI said to my husband, \u2018What do you think of this? Because I really, really like it.\u2019 He said, \u2018Well, then we should get it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Fullam says that after paying the $600 booth fee for the art fair each year, he has a \u201cmanageable loss.\u201d In other words, some years he doesn\u2019t sell enough to cover the booth fee; while \u201csome years I have sold considerably more. And all the money I collect \u2014 and then some \u2014 gets recycled to buy more,\u201d Fullam says.<\/p>\n \u201cWe just do this to get [Peace Prophet] better known,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Geri Biamonte, a social worker at the University of Illinois-Chicago, is another collector. She first met Fullam about 10 years ago, when he noticed her holding a Peace Prophet painting on a Pink Line L train.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Geri Biamonte, a social worker at the University of Illinois-Chicago, is another collector. She created a 2019 YouTube presentation of Peace Prophet\u2019s work that led her children to locate their mother earlier this year. <\/p>\n \u201cThe city is full of varied and talented people, but she is something else,\u201d Biamonte says. \u201cI want to believe that there is a well out there of endless possibility and maybe in her unique ability, she has a unique access to that spigot. For her, it just doesn\u2019t turn off.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Fullam and Biamonte say they\u2019d like to do more for Peace Prophet. Biamonte even tried to talk to her about finding a place to live away from the streets. Peace Prophet wasn\u2019t interested.<\/p>\n \u201cMy take on it is if she had a place, she wouldn\u2019t use it. She needs her freedom,\u201d Fullam says.<\/p>\n Linsey Maughan, a spokeswoman for the Chicago Department of Family & Support Services, told the Sun-Times the agency has offered her services, but she has always refused. Peace Prophet has even rejected her own family\u2019s offers.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Peace Prophet is a true original, and her work is part of a freewheeling artistic tradition whose practitioners have included spiritual mediums and those locked away in psychiatric institutions.<\/p>\n The French artist Jean Dubuffet, who died in 1985, coined the term \u201cart brut\u201d to describe this sort of work. \u201cHe thought most academic, mainstream art was crap. He thought it was just garbage, just fashion,\u201d says Michael Bonesteel, a Chicago-based author who has written extensively about self-taught artists.<\/p>\n Perhaps Chicago\u2019s best known \u201coutsider\u201d artist is Henry Darger, a reclusive janitor who died in 1973, leaving behind<\/a> a room on the North Side cluttered with dozens of pairs of broken eyeglasses, hundreds of his own watercolors, collage paintings and, in a trunk, a 15,000-page typed fantasy novel titled \u201cIn the Realms of the Unreal.\u201d Darger, much of his artwork epic in scope, is considered one of the world\u2019s great self-taught artists.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cI am drawn to people who express themselves unabashedly,\u2019\u201d says Nick Cappelletti, a Saugatuck, Michigan, art gallery owner who has sold Peace Prophet pieces for about the past five years.<\/p>\n \u201cAlmost everything in his work is appropriated. It\u2019s swiped. It\u2019s taken from other sources. \u2026 He\u2019s found the glue to bring it all together,\u201d says Bonesteel, author of the 2000 book \u201cHenry Darger: Art and Selected Writings.\u201d<\/p>\n Mention homeless artists, and, invariably, someone will bring up Lee Godie<\/a>, who for years was a colorful fixture outside of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is best known for her portrait sketches and photo-booth selfies, which she often daubed with paint or ink.<\/p>\n There has been a groundswell of public support in recent years for self-taught art and artists, but it\u2019s still not given the respect it deserves, Bonesteel says.<\/p>\n \u201cEven today, there is a strong institutional bias against it from people who are trained. There is a kind of veiled bigotry toward it,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n One day in June, Peace Prophet is in the basement of Blick\u2019s, bent over a drawer filled with sheets of art paper. She buys three, handing the cashier two crumpled dollar bills. She heads back out onto the streets.<\/p>\n Is she available to chat?<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have time today. I\u2019m waiting for someone,\u201d she says brusquely.<\/p>\n Who?<\/p>\n \u201cMy daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n Peace Prophet paints, to the accompaniment of a wailing police siren, the rumble of a passing L train and a chorus of drills biting into concrete.<\/p>\n An hour later, the white paper is awash in vibrant color \u2014 a Black woman with a wide-brimmed hat, resembling a Nigerian churchgoer in her Sunday best.<\/p>\n There is no sign of Peace Prophet\u2019s daughter.<\/p>\n But as it turns out, the daughter is no figment of her imagination. Peace Prophet has four children, all grown, and eight grandchildren. They know her as Janice Carol Rivers, born at the old St. Luke\u2019s Hospital in the South Loop on July 30, 1955, according to Cook County Clerk\u2019s Office records.<\/p>\n Peace Prophet\u2019s remarkable story begins to trickle out in late July after her son found on YouTube a talk Biamonte, the UIC social worker and collector, had given in 2019 about the artist and her work.<\/p>\n The son shared his discovery with his siblings. \u201cWe were blown away. Our mom has struggled with mental illness our entire lives. \u2026 I haven\u2019t seen her since 2024,\u201d Peace Prophet\u2019s youngest daughter writes in a July 13 Facebook message to Biamonte.<\/p>\n Janice Rivers was a quiet, serious child who, to hear her only surviving sibling describe it, was born with a paint brush in her hand.<\/p>\n \u201cShe was always painting, drawing, coloring,\u201d says the brother, born James, but who later converted to Islam and now goes by Hakim Abdul-Ahad and lives in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n In the family\u2019s yellow-brick Woodlawn apartment, Janice kept an easel, she stretched her own canvases. She devoured books about Picasso, Van Gogh, her brother says. She listened to French language instruction on old 45 rpm records.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Peace Prophet\u2019s youngest daughter has a theory about the woman who appears so often in Peace Prophet\u2019s work, the one with the sidelong glance. \u201cIt\u2019s depicting her mental illness in a drawing,\u201d she says. \u201cThe way the person is always looking off [to the side], to me it\u2019s encapsulating paranoia, always looking over your shoulder.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShe wanted to go to France to study art,\u201d Abdul-Ahad says.<\/p>\n The brother remembers something else: an explosive temper.<\/p>\n \u201cShe would snap. She would go off the deep end,\u201d the brother says.<\/p>\n He remembers his sister getting into an argument over something petty with a boy in fourth grade.<\/p>\n \u201cShe raked his face like a lion,\u201d the brother said.<\/p>\n When Abdul-Ahad approached his mother about Janice\u2019s odd behavior, she dismissed it as \u201ceccentricity,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Whatever her problems, they didn\u2019t stop Janice from excelling in Catholic schools on the South Side, graduating from Unity Catholic High School in 1973. Nor attending DePaul University, where she met her future husband and, the university confirmed to the Sun-Times, earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in sociology in 1978.<\/p>\n She would go on to have four children \u2014 three girls and a boy. Three of Peace Prophet\u2019s children agreed to speak to the Sun-Times, but only if we used either just a first name or no name at all.<\/p>\n Gaia, the oldest and now 45, remembers the pair frequently hopping on the Green Line from the South Side to get downtown.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went to the library almost every week. \u2026 I could read when I was in kindergarten,\u201d Gaia says. \u201cShe laid a very strong foundation for me, just teaching me how to read gave me the power to learn so many things.\u201d<\/p>\n Gaia, now a civil engineer, also recalls her mother\u2019s social work at the since-demolished Ida B. Wells housing project in Bronzeville.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was this one thing she was so proud of,\u201d Gaia says. \u201cShe helped write a grant, and she was able to get the money for a new playground.\u201d<\/p>\n Peace Prophet\u2019s other daughters also speak of a devoted mother. The youngest, a musician living in Los Angeles, is now 31. Her childhood memories of her mother are few and foggy, but she\u2019s never forgotten the time she broke her nose after taking a tumble from her bicycle.<\/p>\n![\"PEACEPROPHET_2609270040.jpg\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1791156619_271_.jpeg\")
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