Patience Haley Ghikas

1926 - 2020

YORK, Maine - Artist Patience Haley Ghikas, born in Boston in 1926, died in York on Sunday, September 13, 2020, at the age of 94, after a brief illness.

Haley was a graduate of Oberlin College and the Bunting Institute of Radcliffe College. Haley taught art at Abbot Academy, the George Walter Smith Museum in Massachusetts, and at Middlebury College in Vermont.

During a time in the 1960's as a fellow at New Hampshire's MacDowell Colony, Patience met her future husband, artist and art educator, Panos Ghikas. They lived and worked in Boston for over 40 years, maintaining studios in the historic Fenway Studio Block and worked in one of John Singer Sargent's former studios on Exeter Street. The couple did a significant restoration work on the famous Falkner Murals at Keen State College and at the Averill Harriman Estate, Arden House. The couple always spent summers in Maine until they settled there permanently.

Patience Haley wrote the following about her work: "When I begin a painting I do not know how it will end. My inspirations are forms inherent in ecology, archeology, fossilized sea life and nature. The islands of Maine have held my fascination with their solitude, light, majestic firs and conglomerate ledges. Ancient ruins and treasures have also held my gaze."

Haley was awarded grants from the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Bunting Institute, the National Institute of Arts and Letters, The MacDowell Colony and Yaddo Foundation.

Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Addison Gallery of American Art, the De Cordova Museum, the Ogunquit Museum of American Art, Smith College Museum, Wesleyan University Center for the Arts, Lehigh University, Colby College and the Bunting Institute.

Haley is predeceased by her husband and survived by her twin sister, Priscilla Haley Bilous of York, Maine.

SERVICES: A private interment will be held at Pine Grove Cemetery in Conway, Massachusetts, and a memorial service will be planned for later date. In lieu of flowers, donations may be made in memoriam to the Ogunquit Art Association, P.O. Box 794, Ogunquit, ME 03907.