About The Artist

PHYLLIS GILLIE JAFFE Creative activity began early in my life, but it was not a natural talent. Good teaching brought out whatever potential I had. After a full career teaching art, public school through university levels, I moved into administration as an university art department chair then President of a Kendall College of Art and Design. Since retiring my time has been committed to art related activities: painting, travel, participation in regional arts organizations and writing a book on iconography. My BA Art degree is from Ball State University, my doctorate in art and education from Indiana University, plus an honorary doctorate in Fine Arts from Kendall College of Art and Design. My seminary degrees are from Seabury Western and Wesley Seminaries. Ordained in 2009, I served three years as a hospital chaplain in the Washington, DC area. During summer months, I continue to study with Cape Cod School of Art painters. For seven years I served as an international management consultant to developing countries establishing regional art centers and galleries in Eastern Europe and organizing women’s craft programs in Nepal and India. My own art developed through a series of continuing transformations from textile wall hangings to symbolic and decorative images, to landscape drawings and paintings. The current work emphasizes color, texture and pattern, as I continue developing my Impressionist painting style. Paintings have won awards in juried exhibits in the mid-west and east coast, in group and one-women shows. One of my wall hanging has recently been juried into a national fiber art exhibit. Family, friends, a few museums and a stranger or two own my work. A book on contemporary trends in iconography is near completion. Specific details and exhibits are available upon request. My husband and I divide our time between Washington, DC and Salisbury, MD