About yours truly…

Nancy White Cassidy is an American artist, currently living in the mountains of New Hampshire. For her first several years of living in New Hampshire, she concentrated on painting regional landscapes, and on running a gallery of fine art & craft (The Cassidy Gallery At Jackson Village), where, for ten years she represented about fifty artists as well as selling her own work.

From her earliest memories, around age 2 or 3, Cassidy was fascinated by colors, especially rich, saturated colors. She recalls a time when as a toddler she lived for several months with her Aunt Annette, while her mother recovered from a near-fatal ectopic pregnancy. Her aunt had clear plastic clothespins in rich jewel-like tones, which she loved to play with on laundry day.  

From that point, Cassidy began to draw. She was fascinated with the brightness of the birds from the Amazon, especially the quetzal and scarlet macaws, which she drew from books around age 4-5. Cassidy was fortunate her Aunt Marie-Ann, another of her mother’s sisters, saved several of the drawings. Marie-Ann was a talented dress designer and seamstress, who was discouraged by a well-meaning father from pursuing a career in fashion design. Decades later, however, Aunt Marie’s influence and dedication to her skill in fashion design continues to inform Cassidy’s current work.

Attending art school was her much longed-for goal, but after high school, her parents insisted on Cassidy going to work at the local telecommunications company, where she remained for twenty years. Eventually, the opportunity finally arose to leave that industry which gave her the chance to finally earn her undergraduate degree in art, followed a few years later with her Master’s degree in visual arts with a concentration in illustration. After graduation, Cassidy taught drawing, painting, and perspective extensively throughout Connecticut and Vermont at colleges, art centers as well as privately at her studio and on location with private clients, the most notably was the late comedienne Joan Rivers from 2006 to 2010.  She also conducted workshops for faculty enrichment and for corporate team-building in Connecticut and in New York City.

The COVID pandemic was a turning point in Cassidy’s career. While the world (along with her gallery) was in shutdown, she spent time in her studio, creating new paintings (still landscapes) and eventually began to experiment with more expressionistic work. That period led her to seek out artist residencies, and from that point on, she left traditional painting behind, although elements from those landscapes still find their way into her new work.