Biography

April 1957 – May 2014

At the age of nine, in the town of Litchfield, Connecticut, Polly was given her first set of paint brushes and began learning the art of painting from her father, an artist with a love for oils. Little did she know at the time, but this would be the beginning of her life focus as an artist.

Early in her schooling she was enrolled in a pre-college art program offered by Wykeham Rise, a local prep school, and the curriculum included an emphasis on museum and gallery visits. For Polly the highlight of the course was a trip to Alexander Calder’s studio—one of her favorite artists of all time.

In the summer of 1976 Polly set out to Great Britain and Europe on an adventure to visit all of the major art museums. Her objective was to see as many Vermeers as possible—and she was almost arrested for standing too long in front of “The Artist in His Studio” at the Kunsthistorisches.

Polly graduated from Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York in 1979 where she was fortunate to work independently with Lois Swirnoff. Lois had completed her graduate work at Yale with Josef Albers, studying alongside Richard Anuszkiewicz and other contemporary colorists, and she is the author of the highly regarded study, Dimensional Color, an “important contribution to the concept of colour as a three-dimensional experience” (Tom Porter, www.rudi.net). This study would help shape her painting’s distinctive contemporary style.

After earning a degree in Fine Art, Polly moved to Bermuda to develop her work as an artist. There she began working primarily in oils and watercolor. Many credit the brilliant colors used in her paintings to the influence of her stay in Bermuda. After three years she was stirred to move to the Cornish fishing village of Penzance in England where her grandfather’s family was from. There she concentrated on photography and traveled extensively throughout Italy to expand her understanding of art.

Polly is inspired by the solitude of her art studio tucked away on a backcountry road in northwest Connecticut.