Jill Ker Conway (b. 1934) is a university professor, writer and company director. She spent her early years on a station in western NSW, which was so isolated that she was seven years old before she saw another girl. As her mother struggled to maintain the property, she attended Abbotsleigh and the University of Sydney, where she was awarded the University Medal for history. Despite her success, she was unhappy with the direction of Australian scholarship, and her own job prospects in this country in the 1950s were minimal. She went to the United States in 1960 to complete a doctorate at Harvard, and has taught in Canadian and American universities ever since. She has written several books on the historical experience of American women and an autobiography, The Road From Coorain, which describes the challenges of her early life in Australia.

This portrait is set at the Conway's country house in Massachusetts. The subject is positioned on the threshold of her living room looking out to the garden and woodlands with, in reality, the living room furnishings behind her. The artist chose however to reverse the picture plane, placing Ker Conway in the woods "as a way of describing her and her love of this landscape".

For background on the artist:
http://www.womenarts.org/Other_Projects/Belchetz-Swenson/belchetz-swenson.html