Gladys M. Nilsson is an American artist, one of the original Chicago Imagists, a group in the 1960s and 1970s who turned to representational art. Her paintings "set forth a surreal mixture of fantasy and domesticity in a continuous parade of chaotic images." She is married to fellow-artist and Hairy Who member Jim Nutt.

Gladys Nilsson was born to Swedish immigrant parents. Her father was a factory worker for Sunbeam, and her mother a waitress. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she met her future husband, fellow student Jim Nutt. Nilsson and Nutt married in July 1961, and their son, Claude was born in 1962. Although Nilsson originally painted with oil paints, she switched to watercolors when pregnan...