Portrait of Paul Andrews
Artist
Nancy Mitchnick
(American, born 1947)
Date1990
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions47 1/2 × 47 3/4 in. (120.7 × 121.3 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineAlumni Association Commission, 1990
Object numberUAC716
DescriptionNancy Mitchnick’s expressionistic portraits have been an important part of her practice from early on. She captured the likenesses of many of the artists and movers-and-shakers in the Detroit arts scene in the 1970s, including Ellen Phelan and Elizabeth Murray (who was a visiting artist at Wayne State University in 1973); John Egner and Michael Luchs; gallerist Susanne Hilberry, with whom Mitchnick showed for many years (“Her interest in my work was wildly important to me,” the painter affirmed in 2012); and Greggi Murphy, described by Mitchnick as a troubled yet “radiant, hilarious, inspired” man, a denizen of the storied Cobb’s Corner bar and a “behind the scenes guy” who was vital to the establishment of the famed Willis Gallery. In 1980, Mitchnick was commissioned to paint an almost full-length likeness of arts patron James Duffy, unusual for her as most of her portraits are, like her painting of Paul Andrews, closely cropped images focused just on her subject’s head. Her 2012 MOCAD exhibit Uncalibrated included three large gray-toned portraits of female creatives — Frida Kahlo, George Eliot, and Virginia Woolf — from a series Mitchnick calls “Wonder Women.”Mitchnick’s portrait of Paul Edward Andrews was commissioned by the Wayne State Alumni Association in 1990. Working in her usual energetic style, she depicts Andrews as bright-eyed and alert, wearing a slight smile. The green background recalls the school’s colors — appropriate, since Andrews, a native Detroiter, has been associated with Wayne State, either as a student, an administrator, or both, for virtually his entire adult life; between 1941 and his retirement in 1990, Andrews earned three degrees from WSU, and served in several administrative positions. He’s been an important booster for sports programs at Wayne State, and was instrumental in the founding of the WSU Athletic Hall of Fame; he served on its board for fifteen years, and was himself inducted in 1993. In 2018, Andrews, now Executive Director Emeritus of the Alumni Association, was named an honorary member of the committee celebrating Wayne State’s sesquicentennial.
Text by Sean Bieri
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Born in Detroit in 1947, Cass Tech and Wayne State grad Nancy Mitchnick was one of the founders of the storied Willis Gallery, and painted portraits of many of the key figures of the Cass Corridor avant-garde; still, she’s often described as an “outsider” even from the city’s 60s/70s artistic fringe. Like her Wayne State mentor Robert Wilbert, she was also noted for her still lifes — painted, as were her portraits, in a vigorous style influenced by the German Expressionist collection at the DIA. In 1974, Mitchnick moved to New York, where she taught at Bard College; later she was an instructor at the California Institute of Arts in Los Angeles, before heading to Harvard, where she taught until 2009. During the 2000s, she made frequent trips to her home town, revisiting family memories and painting ruined buildings. In 2011, Mitchnick made the move back to Detroit; five years later, she had a major showing of her recent work at MOCAD, appropriately titled Uncalibrated.
