Margaret Grimes

MARGARET W. GRIMES
Landscape Painter & Educator
Nationally recognized American painter, Margaret W. Grimes of Washington, Connecticut, passed away on October 9th, 2020, at the age of 77.
Born in New Bern, North Carolina, on June 5th, 1943, Ms. Grimes grew up in Michigan, where she was the eldest of four children, to writers Margaret W. Grimes and Alan P. Grimes, both professors at Michigan State University.
Margaret Grimes went on to study at Washington University in St. Louis, and later at University of Notre Dame in Indiana with painter Alice Neel, before later receiving her MFA in 1980 at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied with Neil Welliver, Paul Georges and Rudy Burckhardt, amongst many others, and where she developed her signature approach to capturing patterns of light and complexity of line and texture. Her detailed landscape paintings of Connecticut and Maine have been the subject of numerous one-person and group shows, both in New York and across the country.
Until recently she was represented by Blue Mountain Gallery in New York City, where she was a founding member, as well as by the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY. Her work is included in the permanent collections of significant museums, private collectors and public institutions, including the Smithsonian's National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Design in New York, where she is a member and Benjamin Altman Prize winner, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters in New York, where she was chosen for the Hassam, Speicher, Betts, and Symons Purchase Award in 2019.
Her paintings have been featured in multiple books on landscape painting and are the subject of many articles and critical essays in leading publications, among those Art in America and ArtCritical.
Ms. Grimes was a Distinguished Professor Emerita at Western Connecticut State University, where she taught painting to generations of students. She was also a visiting artist and lecturer at several other institutions, among them American University in Italy, the New York Studio School, and at Chautauqua Institution.
She married the painter John E. Wallace in 1964, also a professor of art, and together they created the MFA program in Painting at Western Connecticut State University.
Ms. Grimes was much beloved for her clear, critical eye, sharp intellect, her deep sense of spirituality and her personal interest in her students' development as artists and people.
Ms. Grimes was predeceased by her husband, and by her son, Jerome Hulce. She is survived by her son, Bernard Hulce, her daughter, Carolyn Wallace, her sister, Katherine Grimes, her brother, Peter Grimes, her sisters-in-law Ruby Grimes and Roxanne Wallace, her three grandchildren, Jacqueline, Jonathan and Kaitlin Hulce, as well as by her nieces and nephews.
She is also survived by her dearest painter friends and the countless fellow artists and beloved students she leaves behind.