Artist Graham Nickson, who led the New York Studio School (NYSS) in Manhattan for more than half of its history as a passionate advocate for drawing and multi-faceted arts education, died on January 28 in his home in New York City at the age of 79. The news of his death was announced by the school.
A galvanizing arts educator and accomplished painter known for his lush, vivid palette, Nickson is also remembered for his fervent belief in the discipline of drawing, which he described as “the most crucial pathway to understanding in art.” During his over 30-year tenure at the Studio School as a faculty member and dean, he founded the celebrated Drawing Marathon — a two-week all-day intensive that has become an essential component of the school’s curriculum. Since it began in 1988, the program has expanded to encompass painting excursions to Governors Island, museum and artist studio trips, and participants outside of the full-time student body including artists, historians, collectors, educators, journalists, and writers.
In 2004, Nickson established the Studio School’s Master of Fine Arts program, which has delivered 154 Master’s degrees since the first graduating class. Upon Nickson’s retirement last summer, he took on the honorary title of Dean Emeritus.
“ Graham was here every day, as our dean and as an extremely dedicated teacher,” Kaitlin McDonough, acting head of the Studio School and Nickson’s colleague, told Hyperallergic.
“ His presence permeated the building and all of the programs,” McDonough continued, citing his “ generosity of spirit” that continued until his retirement.
Born in August 1946 in Knowle Green, Lancashire, Nickson grew up in a family of artists in northwest England. He pursued a formal arts education at the Camberwell College of Arts (formerly Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts) and the Royal College of Art, where he received his Master’s degree. After two years in Rome, he moved to New York City in 1976 and joined the Studio School’s faculty eight years later.
It was during his first year as a faculty member that he ushered in the signature “Marathons,” which harkened back to the Studio School’s early days, when its first cohort of students held rigorous drawing sessions in a Soho loft. The program also drew from Nickson’s own steadfast belief in drawing, which carried throughout his teaching career and personal art practice.
“ No Marathon that he taught — and he would teach them at least three times a year — was ever exactly like one that came before it,” McDonough said.
“He would present a very wide range of strategies and art historical references and ways of getting into the painting, formally and conceptually, that even very experienced artists would enroll and come back, sometimes 10 times, to refresh their studio practices,” McDonough said.
In addition to his impactful work at the Studio School, where he taught generations of students and uplifted the lives and work of countless artists, Nickson was a dedicated visual artist whose paintings and drawings were spotlighted in solo exhibitions at numerous galleries and museums in the United States and abroad. His paintings, distinctive for their saturated colors and thoughtfully rendered figurative scenes, often depicted beach-goers on densely populated coastlines and close-up portraits of subjects in faraway thought.
Today, his works are held in public collections including the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
“Graham Nickson will always be an integral part of my life both as a friend and as an art dealer, from his early shows at Hirschl & Adler Modern to his commitment to our gallery on Rivington Street,” veteran New York City art dealer Betty Cuningham told Hyperallergic. Her namesake gallery, which vacated its longtime Lower East Side address last spring and now operates online, has represented Nickson since 2015.
In the gallery’s final public exhibition The Last Picture Show, she said Nickson’s 2024 acrylic painting “Et in Arcadia” was featured prominently in the “front and center.”
“Graham will continue to be front and center in the minds of all those whose lives he has touched through his work — including mine,” Cuningham said.
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