Women - Hunterdon County, New Jersey

NESSA GRAINGER
A native of Philadelphia, Nessa Grainger was already a wellknown
and respected artist when she and her husband, Murray,
moved from West Orange to Tewksbury Township in 1985. She
received a classic art education with a B.F.A. from the Philadelphia
Museum School of Art, and studied at Tyler School of Fine Arts and
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Her early work was representational. Feeling the need to
explore something different, she found the answer in abstract
watercolor, to which she later added collage. Inspired by the
unspoiled natural world, especially in the Southwest, she expresses
what she has seen and what she has imagined. Her paintings are
based on the vastness and color of rocks and the striations in them
caused by the wind, the shape of the mountains, the rain, the rivers,
the distance, the massiveness, and the changing of light and
shadows.
Mrs. Grainger has had solo exhibitions of her work at the Elliot Museum in Stuart,
FL; Oldwick's Bosworth-Sans Gallery; the Interchurch Center in New York; Douglas
College; Mutual Benefit Life; Chubb Corporation; Nathan's Gallery; the Bergen Museum;
and has exhibited in shows in New Jersey, New York, California, Indiana, and Ohio.
Her paintings are in the permanent collections of museums throughout the country and
in China, as well as in private collections in America, Mexico, Israel, Holland, India,
England, and Switzerland.
She served as president of the National Association of Women Artists and the New
Jersey Watercolor Society, and has held office in the Allied Artists Program and
Audobon Artists. A six-time recipient of the National Association of Women Artists' Gold
Medal of Honor, she has also received many awards from art societies.
In Hunterdon County, she has been an active member of the Hunterdon Museum of
Art, Tewksbury Historical Society, and the New Jersey Printmaking Council. Mrs.
Grainger was one of five artists invited to participate in the 1994 show sponsored by the
Hunterdon County Cultural & Heritage Commission.
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