Leigh Hyams

Leigh Hyams (1926-2013) was an American painter and educator. She decided in the third grade that she was an artist and never wavered from that conviction. She studied art at Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, earned a B.F.A. at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and an M.F.A. at University of Guanajuato’s Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende. She did post-graduate work at New College Fine Arts Institute in Sarasota, Florida, where she had the honor of being studio monitor for Philip Guston. Over the years, her painting subject matter ranged from European megaliths and Mayan temples, Brazilian rain forests and Yosemite waterfalls, to giant images of imaginary flowers, Mexican folk art, dogs, cows, and her family. Her work was distinguished by an edgy line quality and luminous color. Her drawings, paintings, and artist’s books are in the permanent collections of the Achenbach Foundation in San Francisco’s Legion of Honor Museum, San Jose Museum of Art, Oakland Museum of California Art, Des Moines Art Center, Joslyn Art Museum, Palácio Imperial in Curitiba in Brazil, and University of California at Irvine, as well as private collections in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Her museum exhibitions included solo shows at the Paco Imperial Center for Contemporary Art in Rio de Janeiro and at El Museo de la Ciudad de Santiago Querétaro in Querétaro, Mexico. She was represented by Meridian Gallery in San Francisco. She was a Fulbright scholar, having received a Western European regional research grant for her series of paintings based on Megalithic sites, as well as the recipient of 10 painting fellowships, including Yaddo, MacDowell, American Academy in Rome, and George Rickey’s Hand Hollow Foundation. She served as founding executive director of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California. She worked as an adjunct professor of art at San Francisco State University, San Jose State University, John F. Kennedy University, California College of Arts and Crafts, and University of California at Berkeley. She taught art in mental institutions, Athabaskan Indian villages in Alaska, and at retreat centers in exotic locales, among them Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, and La Serrania in Mallorca, Spain, for a devoted following of painters from around the globe. For many years, she also led international art tours for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She published a book about her artistic journey titled How Painting Holds Me on The Earth: Writings of a Maverick Painter and Teacher and produced a half-hour video about her teaching philosophy titled Making Marks: On the Excitement and Importance of Making Art. She spent her last dozen years in Mexico, where she relished the colors, sunshine, and humane pace of life.

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Leigh Hyams

Studios

Alexander

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