Jenny Hunter Groat

Jenny Hunter Groat (born August 30, 1929 – February 2013) was an American dancer, choreographer, painter, calligrapher, book artist and educator.
She was born LaVida June Hunt in Modesto, California and moved to San Francisco to join the Anna Halprin-Welland Lathrop School and Dance Company. In 1956, Groat studied calligraphy at Reed College. In 1961, she set up her own dance company Dance West. Groat choreographed for KQED television, Stanford University, The Actors Workshop and the Carmel Bach Festival. After she retired from dancing in 1968, she studied Zen and took part in Jungian analysis. In 1972, Groat moved to Mill Valley and established a calligraphy practice. She also produced art books and painted abstract art.Her art book A Vision is in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Her book Beauty and the Beast is in the collection of the Humanities Resource Center at the University of Texas at Austin.She married Maurice "Pete" Frederick Groat.Wikipedia

  "  Though I am completely able to make representational art, I prefer to paint abstractions because of its ability to convey worlds of meaning, feeling, and poetry beyond words or descriptions. I consider myself a 2nd Generation Abstract-Expressionist, since I was living, as a young Modern Dancer, in the 1950’s San Francisco, at the height of that great art movement, and my aesthetic impressions and ways of working were formed at that time. I had two other full art lives: 19 years as a pioneering modern dance performer/choreographer, then as an internationally known artist in fine art, western calligraphy. My return to full-time painting in these past years has been a synthesis of these earlier fields, based in the early Abstractionist years in San Francisco."

 "A native Californian, Jenny Hunter Groat spent 3 years as a Conservatory-trained musician, then moved to San Francisco 1n 1950. She was there amid the excitement and passion of the greatAbstract-Expressionist movement, may well be considered now a “Second Generation Ab-Ex” artist, since all her aesthetic preferences, impressions, and ways of working were formed in the ferment of that time.  After living out her complete art life as a nationally recognized Modern Dance performer, choreographer,innovator and teacher, she resigned from the field in 1968 for personal reasons, and took a 5-year Retreat,renewing her interest in Zen Buddhist practice and the psychology of Carl Jung. In 1974 she re-entered the art world in the field of Western Art Calligraphy. She taught and her work is known throughout the world, even now, and is includ- ed in many collections, books and periodicals. In 1997, however, she returned to the painting world, and that has been her focus since. Abstractions are now informed by all her previous fields, music, dance, and calligraphy. She, like most other artists of her time, is now self taught in this field, where she will continue to work for the rest of her life."(abstractartistgallery.org)