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Ballantyne was born in Norfolk, Nebraska,
just after World War One. She attended Nebraska University for two years, painting
murals in her spare time for department stores and movie theatres before leaving
to study commercial art. After studying at the Academy of Art in Chicago for two
years, she joined Kling Studios, where she painted Rand McNally road maps and
illustrated a dictionary for the Cameo Press.
Ballantyne then moved on to the Stevens/Gross studio, where she stayed
for more than ten years. Influenced, as much of the studio was, by Haddon
Sundblom, she became part of a group of artists who were extremely close,
both professionally and personally, including Gil Elvgren, Earl Gross, AI
Moore, Coby Whitmore, Thornton Utz, and Al Buell. She had first met
Elvgren when he was teaching at the Academy of Art and she was a student.
After years of working closely together they often shared assignments if
one of them became ill or if a schedule was tight.
In 1945, Ballantyne began painting, pin-ups for Brown
and Bigelow, having been recommended by Elvgren. The firm introduced her
to their national sales and marketing staff as "the brightest young
star on the horizon of illustrative art". Ballantyne designed a
"novelty-fold" direct mail pin-up brochure for the company and
eventually was given the honour of creating an Artist's Sketch Pad
twelve-page calendar. Ballantyne's most important pin-ups were the twelve she
painted in 1954 for a calendar published by Shaw-Barton. When it was
released nationally in 1955, the demand from new advertisers was so great
that the company reprinted it many times. Ballantyne then went on to paint
one of the most famous advertising images ever. Coppertone suntan lotion
asked several illustrators to submit preliminary ideas for a special
twenty-four-sheet billboard for their American and international markets.
Ballantyne won the commission, and her final painting (based somewhat on
an ideal of Art Frahm) became a national icon. Its little pig-tailed
girl whose playful dog pulls at her bathing suit charmed the entire
nation.
Ballantyne also did much advertising work for other national clients, including Sylvania TV, Dow Chemical, Coca-Cola, and
Schlitz Beer. She painted pin-ups for the calendar companies Louis P Dow
and Goes and illustrations for such magazines as Esquire and Penthouse.
The strikingly attractive Ballantyne often posed as her own model, as Zoë
Mozert did. Like her friend Gil Elvgren, she preferred to work in oil on canvas.
Ballantyne and her husband,
Jack Brand, moved in 1974 to Florida, where she began painting fine-art portraits. She lives there today and still
keeps in touch with her friends, and fellow Floridians, AI Buell and
Thornton Utz.
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