This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Bonnie Whittingham (1921-1997)
She was born in Boston in 1921. After serving in the US Army during World War II, she attended Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts under the GI Bill.
For many years she lived on West 20th Street in New York City, spending her summers in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Whittingham Studio was a weathered cottage across from the Provincetown Playhouse, nestled on the edge of the beach in the center of town. During the summer her studio was open to the public and had many visitors. She also exhibited at the Provincetown Art Association, and in local galleries.
She painted in a representational style and favored a dark palette, though many of her seascapes and landscapes were colorful and vibrant. Best known for harlequin figures, and seascapes of Provincetown, Mass., her work was widely admired in the Provincetown art scene. She often painted alla prima, but also worked in layers, and liked to allow the spontaneous emergence of images from her unconscious. "I let the canvas tell me who I am," she once explained.
Although she enjoyed a great many artists (and a wide variety of styles), she had a particular fondness for Vuillard, Bonnard,Vermeer, and Goya.
She left New York in the late 1970's and settled in California, where she died of cancer in 1997.
Information provided by Deborah Hillman, a close friend and student of the artist in the early 1970's.
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