Blaine, Nell, 1922-1996

Nell Blaine was born in Richmond (Va.) July 10, 1922. She attended the Richmond School of Art; studied with the artist Hans Hofmann in New York (N.Y.) from 1942-1944; studied etching and engraving at Atelier 17 with Stanley William Hayter in 1945; and attended the New School for Social Research from 1952-1953. She maintained a studio in Gloucester (Mass.) but also traveled and painted extensively in Austria, Egypt, England, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Mexico, Portugal, St. Lucia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and West Indies.

Blaine married Robert Bass, a musician, in 1943; they divorced in 1949. She contracted polio on Mykonos Island (Greece) in the fall of 1959, spending months in a hospital in New York and in an iron lung, but proving the medical opinion wrong that she would not paint again, laboriously retraining her hands. She used a wheelchair the rest of her life and suffered from post-polio syndrome from which she ultimately died November 14, 1996. She was survived by her companion of 30 years, Carolyn Harris, also a painter.

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