Bay Area to Yale to Italy and Back Again: A Chat with Miriam Hitchcock

Miriam Hitchcock is a California based artist, mother and teacher, who has had a fascinating and prestigious career that has taken her from San Francisco, to Yale to Italy and back again. We dig into the "boys club" that was present in the east coast art scene when she was there, living in Italy, the east coast vs. west coast critiques, the "camp" of abstraction, motherhood, and more.Miriam primarily makes paintings often using eccentric shaped formats. She uses a hybrid visual language that is both abstract and figurative, fusing domestic and landscape elements. To me, her work is simultaneously quirky and elegant. Her shaped substrates have an animated quality that magically work with her simplified forms and colors. Miriam's home and studio are on an Arroyo and Santa Cruz, California, where she lives with her spouse, two cats and an Australian shepherd, a bay area, native Merriam completed her BFA at the university of California, Santa Cruz, and received her MFA in painting from Yale. She began teaching, painting, drawing, and design at Brown and Rhode Island school of design. She was also an assistant professor at Cornell university led studio courses in Rome ,Italy through both Cornell and the American university. Returning to live in Santa Cruz in 1990, she taught drawing and painting courses at Stanford and San Jose state. She was a continuous member of the art faculty at university of California, Santa Cruz from 1992, until 2012.Miriam's website: http://www.miriamhitchcock.comMiriam's work on Jen Tough Gallery: https://jentough.gallery/collections/miriam-hitchcockMiriam's work on Artsy: https://www.artsy.net/artist/miriam-hitchcock/works-for-sale