Ila Mae McAfee (1897-1995) was an American painter, illustrator, and muralist. She was born to a ranching family in a rural community outside Gunnison, Colorado. She rode her horse two hours a day to and from school and began drawing horses at an early age on whatever scraps of paper she was able to find with her first full figure of a horse drawn on the pages of the family bible. After high school, she studied at the West Lake School of Art and the Haz Studio School in Los Angeles, followed by receiving a bachelors degree from Western State Colorado College, and then on to the Art Institute of Chicago, the Arts League, and the National Academy of Design. She is best known for her paintings and drawings of animals, particularly horses, her children's book illustrations, and her post office murals. In 1926, she married Elmer Page Turner, a fellow artist, and in 1928 the two moved to Taos, New Mexico. Turner's health soon began to fail due to a neurological condition, leaving him unable to paint and McAfee cared for him until his death in 1966. McAfee remained in Taos at the White Horse Studio she and Turner had opened until 1993 when she moved back to Colorado for the remainder of her life.