San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Alameda painter ‘at top of art world’
Carrying her backpack of sketchbooks and pens, Nancy Seamons Crookston arrived every morning at 7 to Ole’s Waffle Shop in Alameda to take her customary table marked by a goldplated plaque with her name on it to sketch the chef and servers over her standard order of one poached egg on wheat toast, with mint tea.
She’d then walk home to her studio to begin her day’s work in oil figurative painting — a nearly two-decade routine that served her well.
Crookston had achieved the level of master signature of the Oil Painters of America, which puts on juried regional and national shows. There are 3,600 members, most professional artists, and only 70 are distinguished as “master signature” artists selected by committee.
“Nancy really was at the top of the art world. She was one of the best,” said Kathryn Belagratis, executive director of the organization, which is based in Chicago and focuses on representational art. “In time she will be considered one of the best artists in her generation.”
Crookston was also well known in her community, a familiar sight on her morning walks in Alameda. But on Oct. 25, her excursion took a turn that proved serious, then tragic. She tripped on a crack in the sidewalk and tried to break her fall with her right arm. Her heavy backpack full of sketch tools exacerbated the impact.
Her husband of 56 years, Garr Crookson, was behind her to pick her up and get her to the emergency room.
She elected to have surgery so that she could retain her ability to paint, but a week later she collapsed at home while sketching. A blood clot had formed in her lungs, and she could not be revived.
She died Nov. 17 at Alameda Hospital, said her daughter, Sara Crookston Sedillo, middle of five children. Crookston was 74 and would have been 75 on Thanksgiving Day.
“She wanted to be able to paint for another 20 years, and that is the reason she elected to have
surgery,” Sedillo said. “She was super healthy and had a list of things she wanted to do and places she wanted to go, and it was all around her painting.”
At the time of her death, Crookston was also on her way to the top ranking of “signature member” with the California Art Club, based in Pasadena. In order to qualify for that, an artist must have had work exhibited in museums.
Crookston’s art has been in curated group shows in Los Angeles at the Autry Museum of the American West and the Fisher Museum of Art at the University of Southern California, and at the Hilbert Museum of California Art at Chapman University in Orange County.
“Nancy was an extremely imaginative painter who came up with ideas and concepts that were unique and sometimes whimsical,” said Peter Adams, president emeritus of the California Art Club. “You could always see in her work a sense of the beautiful.”
Nancy Seamons was born Nov. 23, 1948, in Hyde Park, Utah, where she grew up. Her first medium was chalk on the sidewalk and she advanced from there to
sketching in class at school, and not just art class.
“She gravitated to art and no other subject in school was interesting to her,” said Sedillo.
Seamons was a cheerleader at Sky View High School in Smithfield, graduating in 1967. She studied art briefly at Utah State University in Logan, where she met her future husband. They were married in 1968 and they settled in Pocatello, Idaho, to raise five kids.
Having been raised herself in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, she and her husband were practicing Mormons and were active in their ward, as were their children. But over time, Crookston stopped believing and ultimately left the church, her daughter said.
At home in Pocatello, she turned a storage room behind the garage into her art room, and that is where the kids could always find her. When the family moved to Logan, the entire upstairs became her studio — except for the two weeks each summer when she would leave for Idaho to study oil painting under the legendary Sergei Romanovich Bongart. In class, Crookston always set up her easel next to that of
Gene Hackman, the actor.
Though she lived in landlocked Utah, Crookston specialized in painting beach scenes, which earned her representation at Gallery Americana in Carmel. Annual driving trips to California in the family van ensued until her husband, an audiologist, decided to move his practice to Alameda and Oakland in 2006.
The kids were all grown by then, but three of them worked in the audiology practice and made the move as well. The Crookstons bought a house on the east end of the island, and that is when she began her morning commute to Ole’s Waffle Shop on Park Street. The Crookston family business, Hearing Zone, is a block away.
When not painting in her studio, Crookston was outside with her easel, covering everything from the Alameda shoreline to skateboarders on the streets.
“Restaurant workers were a favorite subject,” Sedillo said. “She would come in to eat and get to know the servers and the chefs. She’d take photos of them or sketch them and come home and paint them.”
Bus stops were another favorite milieu. Seated at a window table at Cafe Jolie, she had a direct view of people waiting for AC Transit on Webster Street. She did hundreds of sketches there, often posting them to Facebook.
“All of her online friends waited excitedly for her new posts of her breakfast sketches and paintings,” said Susan Abma, president of the Oil Painters of America. “Her paintings were as full of life, playfulness, light and color as she was.”
Crookston sold her paintings online and by commission and took classes at UC Berkeley in order to sketch live models. Her work was often featured in the annual summer show Alameda en Plein Air, at Frank Bette Center for the Arts.
In her final years she came full circle to the sidewalk chalk drawings of her childhood.
“All of a sudden she started going outside with a bucket of chalk and drawing on the sidewalk in front of our house,” Sedillo said.
One chalk work was a woman in sunglasses who seemed to be crawling out of the pavement. Another was an old man carrying lemons, which she accented by putting a basket of Meyer lemons from her own tree for people to take home.
The drawings would either fade away or wash away within days and then she’d start a new one, a five-hour project.
One of her last oil paintings, of her great-niece on a ranch fence, titled “I’ll Show You How It’s Done,” won a gold medal at the Western Regional Exhibition in October. Even after her accident and surgery, she was back to her drawings, working on a series of paintings of Santa Claus, including one with Santa’s arm in a sling, just like hers.
That painting in acrylic was on display at a private memorial that was to be held at Ole’s on Dec. 2. Other works by her, in watercolor, ink and oil will remain on display, along with the nameplate at Crookston’s table.
“Nancy was the kind of person that no matter how busy you are, you make the time to stop and say hello,” said Ken Monize, owner of Ole’s. “She was so kind and caring and passionate about everything and everyone around her.”