Susan Rothenberg, who helped to usher figure drawing back into art in the 1970s, died May 25 at her home in Galistero, NM. She was 75.

Ms. Rothenberg took art lessons as a child but harbored no serious hopes of becoming a professional. Later, she came up with the idea of penetrating deep into the Nova Scotia woods to teach English in some rural town. But then, on a whim, she changed trains in Montreal for New York City, easily tapping into the SoHo art crowd.

In a 1984 Times Magazine interview, Ms. Rothenberg said she considered herself a groundbreaking artist partly in the sense that she’d had the confidence to paint for herself. “I almost feel I can take the most banal subject matter and make a good painting out of it,” she said.