At the ripe age of 92, Nora Chapa Mendoza has snagged the 2024 Kresge Eminent Artist accolade, pocketing a cool $100,000 prize, not too shabby for a lifetime of splashing paint and standing up for civil rights and the rights of women and migrant workers, The Detroit News reports. This year’s jackpot is double the dough from last year, so you could say the stakes for honoring cultural heavy-hitters in Detroit just got high.

Mendoza's artistry, hailing from a one-room house in Weslaco, Texas, just a stone's throw from the Mexican border, has carried weight far beyond the canvas, her works often delve into the abstract beauty of her Indigenous spirituality and Chicana heritage, according to a Metro Times interview. The Kresge Foundation, apparently feeling generous, isn’t stopping at Mendoza’s windfall; they’re also beefing up the grants for their fellows—25 creative minds will rake in $40,000 each later this year, that's an uptick from the former stash of $25,000 doled out to 20 fellows.

Chapa Mendoza, who didn’t just sit pretty but hustled to bask in the spotlight of Detroit's Scarab Club—where she became the first Latina to scrawl her mark alongside creative juggernauts like Diego Rivera—has her name etched in the historic gallery’s equivalent of a hall of fame, Kresge highlights. Sure, she's been around the block, but let's dial it back to when Mendoza rolled up her sleeves at Galeria Mendoza way back in ‘81, showcasing a world of Latin American zest right in Detroit, flexing her muscles both as an artist and a maverick gallery owner.

Let the words of Chapa Mendoza herself tell you how she got hooked on the whole painting gig, she reminisced in the Metro Times about her pops, who was a house painter, and would show her how to blend colors and finesse the brush like a pro when they were reunited—seems creativity ran in their pipes. Despite an erstwhile hubby who wasn’t too keen on her painting pursuits, she gave him the boot, followed her heart, and never looked back, this could be why at 92 she's still rocking the easel like nobody's business, as her awestruck daughter Laurie Psarianos notes. “For me, painting is like eating. Just as I need to eat to live, I need painting to nurture my soul, my heart, [and] my inner being. If I stopped painting, what would be the point in living?” Mendoza said, per Metro Times.

This art virtuoso, the first Hispanic artist to bag the Kresge Eminent Artist title, continues to dominate the scene with her unapologetic strokes of genius, pushing boundaries within Detroit's creative smorgasbord—so watch out world, because Mendoza and her canvases show no signs of slowing down, and that's the bottom line.