Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective
Curated by Adam Erickson and Elysia Michaelsen
Nancy Sargent’s paintings are imbued with exuberance and curiosity. As an artist, she seems to be always moving, always exploring, always evolving. Her retrospective this year at Peninsula School of Art (PenArt) is the culmination of 65 years of creative, perpetual motion. On full display is her masterful grasp of composition and the interaction of color – often balancing a bright palette with intricate patterns and fearless experimentation.
Frequently rendering tight lines and patterns in astonishing detail, she is a careful study of her subjects as well as her craft. At the same time, Nancy embraces a sense of playfulness and is just as ready to shift into loose and expressive gestures. The work on view in Nancy Sargent: A Retrospective demonstrates the unfolding conversation of one artist between abstraction and figuration – weaving back and forth over several decades. In more recent years, the two approaches seem to find harmony within a single composition – florals both rendered and flattened, patterns both referenced and imagined, combined with linear elements to create shifts in perspective among the layers of abstraction and representation.
After rigorous art training in college, Nancy returned to her hometown of Fish Creek to begin her career in art and education. At Gibraltar High School, her alma matter, Nancy was invited to launch the school’s first official art program. She would later open and run an advertising company with her husband, John, in Milwaukee, where the couple raised two children. Upon retirement, Nancy decided once again to make Fish Creek her home. At that time, she was introduced to PenArt, where she continued her artistic development by taking classes in a variety of mediums. The Art School facilitated social connections as well, allowing Nancy to build relationships with a growing network of artists in Door County. She taught a number of classes herself at PenArt, and later joined the board of directors, where she has served as an advocate and ambassador for 30 years.
Nancy is an engaged resident and a dedicated champion of the arts in Door County. She became an artist and art educator despite not having art education in her own early schooling. Through observation and imagination, she creates works that are bold and energetic while also being carefully crafted. She is a fearless and joyful painter whose evolution is never complete, yet one thread that stretches across six and a half decades is a powerful understanding of formalism. She explores and celebrates the creative process as much in her paintings as she does in her life and community.