Nancy Prophit

In the 1970s Nancy started a 6-member artists coop after the studio where she painted closed. She did all the organization and paperwork herself. There, and at another studio/gallery on Mack, she organized a Monday Evening “Life Study Workshop”. In recalling those Monday nights, her daughter says Nancy always made dinner before leaving for the studio. If a model had to cancel, she would enlist one of the kids to model. She was relentless in ensuring that her group of artist friends had a “live” model. Nancy and her husband would spend weeks cycling on a tandem bicycle in Scotland – living off what they had packed in their saddlebags.

She loved learning new things, and her interests even extended to gold leafing and icon painting. One of her icons can be seen on the right side of the altar at St. Paul’s on the Lake Catholic Church in Grosse Pointe, Michigan. So far, her kids have photographed 1,346 individual pieces and are still having people say, “I have one of your mom’s paintings.