Robert Nason

Robert Nason (1923-2019), born in Cranston, R.I., served in the U.S. Navy toward the end of World War II as a Communications Officer in Manila in the Philippines. His older brother, also in the Navy, had been killed at Leyte Gulf in 1944. Service interrupted Robert's college experience but after the war he was able earn degrees from Brown University (where some of his Navy training took place) and from The Rhode Island School of Design, in Providence.

As a painter, he felt most strongly drawn to innovative abstract work, which led him through biomorphic monochromatic pastels and geometric oil paintings into large brilliantly colorful acrylics. He also created still lifes, figure drawings, and watercolors of outdoor subjects. He exhibited frequently in Massachusetts and Maine.

For years, he worked in studios in his home or in rented spaces while also raising a family and attending to his career as an art teacher, frequently moving to find places that would allow him to devote maximum attention to family, to making a living, and to his art.

After his children were grown and he retired from teaching, he found a long-sought artistic home and community at Running with Scissors Artist Studios in Portland, Maine. He relished the camaraderie there, the daily contact with fellow painters and those who worked in sculpture, photography, collage and clay. In his final years, he was cared for in Dresden, Maine, by his son Tim Nason and Tim's wife Susan Leiter.