A retrospective of paintings by the late Nelda S. Haley will be on view at Studio Place Arts (SPA) in Barre from August 11 to September 19, 2009. The show will include 15 oil paintings spanning from 1952 to 2004, along with preliminary drawings and watercolors. The show will include subjects as seemingly ordinary as "Washing Machine and Vacuum Sweeper" to the superb, "Mozart Opera." Works will be on view in the Third Floor Gallery at SPA, the floor where Nelda had an art studio. There will be an opening reception for the retrospective and 2 other exhibits at SPA on Friday, August 14, 5:30-7:30 PM, and her son, Dan Haley of Montpelier, will be playing solo instrumental music starting at 6PM.

Nelda S. Haley was born Nelda Margaret Smith (Aug. 7, 1929) in Waterbury, Connecticut. The child of a stone mason, Ralph Smith, and her music loving mother Marion, she and her two brothers, Richard and David, grew up in a renovated carriage house on her grandfather's produce farm in the hills of Connecticut's Litchfield County during the Depression and WWII years. Nelda graduated from Thomaston High School in 1947.

From 1947-49, Nelda attended Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where she took art courses, drawing and painting from still lifes and models. At Antioch she met writer and teacher Leroy Dennis Haley, to whom she was married in 1948. In 1952, the couple moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, where Nelda studied drawing and painting with Hans Hofmann, one of the most important teachers of the 20th century, at his Village School. She also studied with Louis Schanker at the New School for Social Research, mostly under scholarship, and (from 1956-58) with Reuben Tam at Brooklyn Museum Art School. While living in NYC and painting whenever possible, Nelda also gave birth to two children, Lin (1953) and Daniel (1957).

In 1958, when the Haley family moved to Wisconsin, Nelda continued painting on her own, which Mr. Hofmann had assured her she was ready to do. Rural Wisconsin afforded new and challenging subject matter: lakes, barns, old farm machinery, horses, cows, and trees. Coming from the hills and forests of New England, she referred to Wisconsin as "big sky country."

From 1958-1966, Haley remained extremely active with art, painting, and entering in group shows. She stretched her own canvasses and framed her paintings by using wooden stripping, which she painted to complement the contemporary subject matter. She participated in many exhibits in the greater Milwaukee area, and won several awards. During this time, she staged 2 solo shows at Pietrantonio Gallery in NYC, and Lin recalls her building the wooden crates that the paintings were shipped in, then traveling to Manhattan to attend one of the shows.

During her years in Delafield, Wisconsin, Haley was a founding member of Studio 6, a co-op gallery where the art of members and others was featured. She also formed a local critique group, which met weekly to assess each other's art, and in the summers, she gave art lessons to kids.

In 1966, while Leroy taught English at Whitewater College, Nelda enrolled there with the intent of furthering her art studies, and then became interested in Special Education. In 1970, the family moved to Oconomowoc when Leroy returned to teach at University Lake School. Nelda continued to commute to Whitewater to attend classes and graduated in 1974 with a BS in special education. She then worked as a teacher and music therapist at a nearby children's residential treatment facility.

In 1976, after Nelda and Leroy separated, Nelda moved to North Montpelier, then East Montpelier, Vermont, so she could live closer to her aging parents in Connecticut. She found employment with the State of Vermont, first with the Office of Child Development, then with Adult Protective Services. In 1996, she retired and re-entered the art world. After a 25-year hiatus, she rented a studio space at Studio Place Arts in Barre, Vermont. She started painting again and entered her work into a few group shows at SPA, as well as the T.W. Wood Art Gallery in Montpelier.

The artwork of Nelda Haley can be divided into three categories: student work (1947-1952), New York/Wisconsin (1953-1970), and her post-retirement Vermont period (1997-2008), her vision and style remained unique and unchanged from the beginning. Unlike the Abstract Expressionists whose work was considered cutting edge in New York in the 1950's, she was not a spontaneous emotionally motivated painter, throwing and dripping paint as her feelings dictated. Translating the interaction of the light and colors of multi-dimensional planes onto a flat surface was like a puzzle for her. Throughout her career Nelda painted thoughtfully crafted abstractions derived from actual objects and scenes, a conscious process which often involved much intellectual processing and planning before painting.

Nelda Haley's student work is distinct from the other periods in that it seems to borrow from previous artists. In this work, one piece differs drastically from the next in terms of style, displaying much exploration, with moods ranging from dramatic to whimsical. In her early days, Nelda drew many pen and ink cartoons; one set to an Emily Dickinson Poem, another to a drinking song, and many depicting life in New York when she worked with demanding customers at a department store between Art classes.

In Haley's middle period, her work takes on a certain unity and a more individualistic style. Hofmann's and Schanker's principles of composition and color are clearly at work here, yet she has also found her own voice within the abstract art framework. Music was always extremely important to Nelda (she gave piano lessons in Wisconsin and sang in large choral productions, such as Handel's Messiah), and this love of music is reflected in the shapes and rhythms of her middle period and in her subjects (String Quartet, Mozart Opera, Still Life with Cello). During this period, she worked with woodcuts, linoleum prints, charcoal and pastels, as well as oil painting. Another feature of her art at this time is that the paint is layered at its thickest, and while using a wide range of colors to depict the nuances of spatial relationships, there is much contrast between light and dark tones.

Haley's Late Vermont period also displays the unity of style found in the New York/Wisconsin period, but here the paint is not layered as thickly, and the shades are lighter and more delicate. Nelda's subjects at this time involve more outdoor scenes. Many or most of these paintings were derived from photographs (Morro Bay Harbor was based on a snapshot sent from her daughter in California). While some pieces were finished and signed, there were also at least a dozen very promising and lovely paintings that were begun since 2000 and left incomplete, as if she was not quite satisfied with much of the recent work.

The three phases of Haley's artistic trajectory combine to form a marvelous gestalt spanning 60 years of observation and exposition in the life of an abstract painter, and those of us who profoundly miss her companionship are fortunate to have these paintings as visual reminders of Nelda's unique perceptions and her insightful interpretations of our world.