ELINOR PECK SEVERINGHAUS OEUVRE

Bay Area abstract painter Elinor Ford Peck Severinghaus was born in Guatemala City in 1925 to Horace Dudley Peck and Dorothy Miller Peck, and was raised with the help of her maternal grandmother, impressionist painter E. Gertrude Miller. Her parents worked on numerous missionary projects including the first written use of the Mam language in their translation of the New Testament from the Greek; the founding of a medical clinic in the remote Western Highlands (which survives today), and many other humanitarian projects that deeply affected her and her three younger siblings.
Elinor was schooled at home in Guatemala by her mother using mail correspondence with the Calvert School in Baltimore until age 13. She then spent a year in Friend's Select School in Philadephia, 3 years at prep school "Northfield" (MA) and 4 years at Wellesley where she met John who was working at MIT. While she was completing an MA in Education at NYU, they married in the Northfield chapel in 1948, 26 years to the day after her parents' marriage in the same chapel, on August 28th.  Northfield remains the family summer site with 7 adjacent family cottages on a ridge behind the school.  The Northfield school official hymn  "Jerusalem"   became Elinor's favorite.
    Through a long career in art and arts education she created a beautiful and meaningful body of work and a place among other Bay Area painters of the 1960s. While making these colorful studies around coastal northern California and Oregon, in the 1960s Severinghaus was a student of  Marin County artist Richard D. Yip (1919-1981), known for landscapes and coastal views. In the late 1960s she joined the new “Sight and Insight” center for painting and sculpture founded in Mill Valley by Ann O’Hanlon (1908-1998) and her husband Professor Richard O’Hanlon (1906-1985) (UC Berkeley sculpture). It was made available to all, regardless of age, training or income. It is now named the O'Hanlon Center for the Arts. In 1972, collaborating with her close friend and neighbor artist Suzi Martin, Elinor published a book about her teacher,  "According to Ann".  Elinor turned completely to abstract expressionism through collage, ink, monoprinting, and painting with other media.
      She lives in Ross, Calif. with her husband of 63 years, UCSF Anesthesiologist - Physiologist John Wendell Severinghaus. They have four children and two grandchildren.

78. Biggest Ink Spill. 1989. 48x48" Sumi Ink, paper, 1.4" plywood.

Elinor's show, O'Hanlon Center for the Arts, Mill Valley, July 2006

Cover of "According to Ann", a book of Ann O'Hanlon paintings and ideas about art, written by Suzi Martin and Elinor Severinghaus in 1972. wc, 22x28" stretched canvas. Booklet has been reprinted many times, edited mostly by Suzi Martin, rewritten and retitled "Seeing/Perception- looking at the world through an artist's eye", 2001, Arctos Press, Sausalito CA.