HANOVER, NH — Artist Robin Nuse died on May 3, 2019 in her home in Hanover. She was 67. Robin endured malignant melanoma for almost four years but her passing came as a shock to most of her many friends because she remained vigorous and optimistic until the very end. She played an active game of tennis a week before her death.
Robin was born in Doylestown Pennsylvania on January 10, 1952, the child of J. Paul Nuse and his wife May. Her parents, a violinist and a cellist, were teachers except when financial necessity dictated otherwise. Her grandfather Roy Nuse, whom she revered and emulated, was a Pennsylvania impressionist painter. Mr. Nuse was honored as a young artist but did not join the expressionist and abstract vanguard as it captured the art world and he gradually withdrew his work from public exhibition. Robin found, photographed and cataloged several hundred of Roy Nuse works in the possession of the extended family and organized a retrospective exhibition of his work at the James Michener museum in Doylestown, which brought his name and work back into prominence. The Michener museum is now a major repository of his work.
Robin learned from her Grandfather and her artistic education continued in college. Robin graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design where excelled in photography and spent a formative year in Rome. She then moved to Vermont where she pursued her artistic interests as a docent in the Fleming Museum in Burlington, as an art teacher in north western Vermont, as an art therapist in the Vermont State Hospital and as a creator of a series of animal masks that were sold in craft fairs throughout the Northeast. She obtained a Master of Art Therapy Degree at Goddard College.
Robin met Arthur Gardiner in a community theatre production in Hyde Park, Vermont and they married in 1989. She thereafter found the time to work on her career as a pictorial artist. In early work she used pastels but gradually evolved into oil paints. Her work is dominated by landscapes around the Upper Valley and her second home near Stowe Vermont. She helped found the Jacob Walker Art Gallery in Morristown, Vermont that offered exhibition space for many artists in Northern Vermont. Robin’s work has been shown in many galleries over the years and can now be seen on her web site.
Robin was deeply involved in the athletic activities of her son Andrew and her paintings of Occom Pond where he frequently skated have been reproduced and adorn many homes in the Hanover area. Because of her son’s interest, Robin was the prime mover in re-initiating Little League baseball in Hanover. She took up tennis as a result of her son’s participation in that sport and over the years spent wonderful times with the many close friends she developed on the courts. Her decoration of a pig in the Pig and Wolf contest that was conducted by the Hanover Recreation Department to raise funds for the playground at Thompson Terrace ten years ago brought an astounding $22,000 at auction, a result which brought great satisfaction, if some skepticism.
Robin loved dogs and always had a dog as an emotional center in her life. Her daily dog walks along Mink Brook, or in Pine Park, or into town to get a biscuit treat at Gnomon Copy or Ledyard Bank, were essential ingredients in her active life.
Robin is survived by her husband and her son Andrew and by two brothers, Gene Nuse of Fayette, Missouri and Eric Nuse of Johnson, Vermont, a sister Anne Matey from Salisbury, Maryland, and many nieces and nephews.
There will be a memorial celebration at the opening of a retrospective exhibit of her work at the Howe Library in December.