Nancy Depew, 1955 | Realist painter

Known for her highly realized figurative paintings and drawings which combine traditional painting techniques with more contemporary approaches, Nancy Depew has been awarded painting fellowships from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation in 1986 and from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1987 and again in 2004.

Nancy Depew has been devoted to representational painting and drawing since early childhood, but began her formal education in painting at Lycoming College in Williamsport, PA and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1977.
Her desire to pursue the figurative work she had begun, led her to graduate studies at the University of Albany, The State University of New York and in 1985, she received a Master of Fine Arts in Painting.

Nancy Depew has held teaching positions at the Savannah College of Art and Design, the duCret School of the Arts, and Monmouth University.

She has also presented a variety of lectures and gallery talks not only on her own work, but on related topics including several gallery talks presented through the Docent Association of the Art Museum at Princeton University entitled The Figurative Impulse, Polarities in Art Making, and Mastering Identity.

Her paintings and drawings have been exhibited widely and are collected internationally. She now lives and paints in her hometown of Plainfield, NJ.

• Artist's Statement

I do not know what the finished painting will look like when I begin. I start with a gesture. It is a visual idea, an intuitive idea, not a verbal or rational one. I am not interested in documenting reality. I make three-dimensionally believable images, but I never think of them as "real", I am more interested in investigating the intuitive aspect of a subject. I dig into the nature of experience - Nancy Depew.