Nancy Hauser (1944 – 2025)
Nancy Hauser’s artistic journey began at an early age, but it was in her late 20s — widowed at just 27 — that painting became her deepest form of expression and healing. She converted the family garage into a small studio, painting in the quiet hours after her young children went to bed, pouring her emotions and love for the world around her into her canvases.
Art and framing ran deep in Nancy’s family. Her parents, both artists themselves, started a picture framing business in San Francisco in 1958. Over the years, each of the children ran their own stores across the Bay Area, including Nancy and her husband, who owned a San Jose location. After her husband’s passing, Nancy turned the store over to family, freeing herself to focus more on her art and children aged 8 and 3, one of whom is special needs, while still staying rooted in the creative world that shaped her.
In those early years, Nancy, along with her parents, traveled up and down the California coast to art shows. She loved the energy of those days, setting up her booth, interacting with other artists, and often painting on the spot — capturing the immediacy of the moment in bold strokes and color. She worked primarily in acrylics and oils but also dabbled in watercolor, pastels and sculpture, constantly exploring new mediums and techniques.
A move from California to Southern Oregon, and later to Sedona Arizona, deepened Nancy’s connection to the land and light that inspired her work. She fell in love with the desert after her husband’s death in 1972, during her first drive through the Sonoran Desert — a place and a feeling that would continue to surface in her paintings for decades. Her canvases often reflected the warm adobe architecture, rustic gates, vibrant desert blooms, and serene beauty of the Southwest.
Nancy shared her creative life with her daughter, doing art shows in Tucson and later in Sedona, where the red rocks and spiritual energy inspired new collections. In her later years, her large canvases gave way to small or mini paintings and hand-painted magnets. Her daughter cutting down large panels of Masonite to her desired sizes, she loved working on Masonite, often saying, “If it was good enough for Maxfield Parrish, it’s good enough for me.”
Just before her passing in February 2025, Nancy and her daughter began revisiting her body of work with fresh eyes, selecting pieces to reimagine and share with the world again, this time online as art shows take so much work and time that was now a bit too much. Though she was, like many artists, her own toughest critic, Nancy took pride in knowing her paintings brought joy to others.
Today, her legacy lives on not only through her vibrant, heartfelt artwork but also in the creativity and passion she passed down to her family. Each painting tells a story of resilience, exploration, and a lifelong love affair with art — a reminder, as her father then herself would often say, to “keep ’em coming, kid.” When working on a new idea or project and showing their sigh of approval.
So if her artwork touched you please let me know. It’s my honor to help it to live on... yet again.
-deb