Wildlife painter, Nancy Glazier, specializes in big game herd animals and is fascinated by the awesome power of her subjects. She was born and raised in Utah, where she spent much of her free time drawing animals.

As a youth she won summer scholarships to the Art Center of Los Angeles. By the time she was a teenager, and the family was living in California, Glazier had decided to forego a college education.

Rather, she rented a guesthouse and began to paint with a fervor but at the time sales were slow. She then met a collector who offered her $100. for an entire month's work, when her rent was $50. a month. Glazier's first big break came when she spent a month painting a still life and brought it to an art gallery. When a couple saw it, they had to have it, but Glazier was worried that they wouldn't be able to afford the $1,000. price tag, but the gallery owner assured her that if they wanted it bad enough they would pay, and they bought it.

When she could afford a car, she spent much of her time at the local zoo, where she photographed animals for her work. Although she had been painting still lifes and portraits, exotic animals were her first love.

About six years ago, she felt a growing restlessness, making her reevaluate and reassess what she had been doing. It hit her to challenge herself and paint with her left hand. She creates some works completely with her right hand, others completely with her left. Her right-handed paintings are detailed and require long hours of intense concentration, while her left-handed paintings are looser, focusing on color and design. She now signs her right-handed paintings with "N. Glazier," her left-handed work with N.L. Glazier, the "L" representing "left hand," she says.

Her paintings have been exhibited at the Hiram-Blauvelt Art Museum in a one-woman show, and she was selected to paint the 1998 poster for the Friends of the National Zoo in Washington D.C.

Source:
Vicki Stavig, "Nancy Glazier, Leaping the Fence" Art of the West, May/June 2003

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In 1988, she and her husband were living near Gardiner, Montana and experienced the tragedy of the fires at Yellowstone National Park.

Nationally acclaimed wildlife artist Nancy Glazier knew early in life she would become an artist. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah and essentially self taught, her childhood artistic efforts were praised by both parents and by the age of eighteen, she had left home, tutored art and supported herself selling her works. Some thirty years later, Nancy continues on an endless quest, searching for beauty deep within the painted surface, bringing life and spirit into the dimensional aspect of her paintings.

Today, Nancy is best known for her magnificent paintings of North American wildlife in their natural habitat, portrayed amid majestic backdrops. With every brush stroke she communicates a deep commitment to the preservation of wildlife and the environment. The year 2000, however, has brought about a new dimension to her work. Nancy explains, "In the spring of 2000, a season of new beginnings, an inner door flew open, and my first "left hand" wildlife paintings emerged." Although not ambidextrous, Nancy's new "left-handed" paintings combine her years of training with accessing her mind through new channels.

These new works ensue on canvas a contemporary and fluid feel, each brush stroke expressing an intense vibrant beauty and inner energy. And as Nancy explores this new realm of design she reminds us that new beginnings allow us "to sing and to fly and to feel the wind through our fingertips"…but only if we dare to explore the possibilities of change."Nancy was named Wildlife Artist of the Year in 1992 and has since won many awards and accolades.

Her paintings are held in many private and corporate collections around the world including the Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum, and she has exhibited with The Leigh Yawkey Woodson Museum of Art and the Pacific Rim Wildlife Art Show. Two of her magnificent original oils hang in the LDS Museum of Church History and Art in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Nancy and her husband Lee divide their time between homes in Nevada and the Fiji Islands, an exotic locale that has inspired recent "left handed paintings" of still-lifes, portraits and seascapes.

Nancy Glazier

Wildlife painter of the Yellowstone, Tetons, and Black Hills, born in Salt Lake City, Utah in 1947 and living in Linden, Utah. "My paintings have become a direct link between the wild creatures and we civilized creatures," she said, "the canvas being the window. I can feel the spirit of each animal come alive at some point while I'm painting. It is almost like a hidden spark I must fan into a flame. It is the joy of creation."

Immersed in art and animals from an early age, Glazer took lessons from an old German artist in Cody, Wyoming, when she was fifteen. "He has white hair and a strong cigar," she recalls, "and he used to watch me paint, giving abrupt corrections. Once he caught me using black paint—then he really did get upset! I dreamed some day to paint like him. I hope he'll forgive me that I now use black." At eighteen, she decided to become an artist. "I just knew I had to paint. It was like a responsibility, not a choice. I was scared, yes, but I love adventure." She talks about years "of struggle and poverty, but it was worth it. The opposition fed my dreams."

Glazier moved back to Utah and began studying North American wildlife. She "set out alone to find the secret place of a moose cow and her calf, to spot the antelope buck who had spotted me long before, to gain time and trust with a royal elk, so close I can feel the moisture of his breath, so study eye to eye with a surly old bull bison. She is a member of Women Artist of the American West.

Resource: Contemporary Western Artists, by Peggy and Harold Samuels 1982, Judd's Inc., Washington, D.C.

Nancy Glazier is passionate about her art and the subject of her art. This passion is evident in the way she paints and the way she lives - they are inseparable. Surrounded by mountain beauty and the animals the artist loves to paint, Glazier says, "I feel a kinship with the animal that grows as the painting progresses. There is a powerful chemistry at work. People ask me, "Which is your favorite animal to paint?" I can tell you it is the very animal I am painting at the time.

For Glazier, it is "...a warm, living, breathing process that brings me back again and again to the easel. It is my ultimate reward." Many of the artist's admirers and collectors consider Glazier to be an extraordinary artist whose paintings seem "alive." For her, this is warm praise, because she desires to share what she experiences through her paintings. She hopes the viewer, too, will feel the warmth of the sun or the crisp chill of winter, smell the sage and dust, or hear the bellow of the bison.

Glazier knew she wanted to be an artist from early childhood. In her teens, she lived in Wyoming where she immersed herself in the rugged, western terrain. There she was mentored and taught by artist Adolph Spohr, who gave her private instruction and taught her how a professional uses paint and brush...how to observe and self-correct. The artist's style evolved over time. After seeing a dramatic photograph of a grizzly, she was awakened to a desire to paint animals "close up and hair-by-hair"