Marion Nicoll
Marion Florence Nicoll was a Canadian painter. She is known as one of the first abstract painters in Alberta. In 1933 she became the first woman instructor at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art.Biography
Nicoll was born in Calgary, Alberta. She began painting at St. Joseph's Convent in Red Deer, taking classes between 1925-26. Later, she studied formally at the Ontario College of Art in Toronto, Provincial Institute of Technology and Art in Calgary, Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, Emma Lake Seminar in Regina, and the Art Students League of New York in New York City. Nicoll went on to teach at the Provincial Institute of Technology and Art, the University of Alberta, and the Banff School of Fine Arts.
Nicoll started her painting career depicting Alberta landscapes, then developed into using abstraction in the 1950s, in particular after her visit to the Emma Lake Artist's Workshop conducted by Will Barnet in 1957. According to Christopher Jackson, from that point on, Marion completely abandoned naturalism.
Nicoll lived in the Bowness neighbourhood in Calgary with her husband Jim Nicoll, an engineer and amateur artist originally from Fort Macleod, whom she met in 1933 and married in 1940. Many of her paintings are held by the Glenbow Museum in Calgary. A Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design is named after her.
Nicoll had to abandon painting in 1971 due to arthritis, but continued to make art with using a more physically manageable, though unconventional technique she called clayprinting.
