BIO

Don Nice (1932 - 2019) grew up in California’s San Joaquin Valley. As a boy, he was fascinated by his grandfather’s accounts of encounters with outlaws, stories of cowhands, ‘49ers, overland stagecoaches and the lore of local train robbers. Nice’s grandfather, a physician and gold miner, provided his family with the experience of living on the range and Nice grew up wearing chaps and herding cattle, dodging rattlesnakes and setting out barbed wire. According to Nice, “I became acquainted with the world not by television, car, train or jet, but from the saddle on a horse or the leather of my boots: slow, steady and in a focused way in which survival could depend on your familiarity with the land.” From this experience emerged Nice’s innate love for the environment.

Encouraged by his grandfather and aunt, both amateur painters, Nice developed an interest in painting. Also a talented athlete, Nice earned a full four-year football scholarship to the University of Southern California. After graduation, he taught art at the Andrew Jackson High School for Delinquent Boys for six months, before volunteering for the draft after the Korean War. He served for two years in the United States Army assigned to Fort Ord on the California coast at Monterey. There he was a company-level illustrator and completed a twenty-four foot mural in the mess hall, while also teaching art at Monterey Peninsula College. He exhibited his work at the Carmel Art Center where he was introduced to an important art collector, Helen Potter Russell, who took an interest in his art. After his discharge from the army, he decided to study painting in Rome, Italy on his G.I. Bill.

While living in Florence for two and a half years, he met many artists and went to Salzburg for the opportunity to study with Oskar Kokoschka (1886–1980). Nice recalls that, “Kokoschka taught me “how to see” and to “forget about making paintings and concentrate on painting.” “Open your eyes,” Kokoschka would exclaim, “look at the light, the colors, the forms and spaces and seize it all with your brush.” To this day Nice recalls Kokoschka as “the biggest influence of my life.” From Italy, Nice went to Paris and saw a major exhibition called The New American Paintings, curated by Dorothy Miller from the Museum of Modern Art. Nice, excited by the work of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock and the possibilities of Abstract Expressionism, returned to America. He moved to Minneapolis, married Sandra Smith, who he had met in Paris and taught painting at the Minneapolis School of Art.

In 1962, at age thirty, Nice was accepted to the graduate school of painting at Yale University. Fellow students included Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downes, Janet Fish, Nancy Graves, Robert Mangold, Richard Serra and others. However, the greatest influence for Nice was Alex Katz, who encouraged his students “to be as inventive as possible, to be as informed about art history as possible, and know as much as about yourself as you can and get subject matter back into painting.” Nice turned his attention to his own personal life experiences and his relationship with art, nature, culture and the environment to develop a distinctive painting style that has continued to evolve during the past forty years.