Priscilla Bowden Potter, Landscape Painter
Priscilla Bowden Potter, whose paintings captured the beauty and light of the East End, died in New York City after a brief illness on July 19. She was 76.
According to Arlene Bujese, a curator and art dealer who exhibited Ms. Potter’s work, “Her paintings, primarily of the Long Island landscape, evoke a sensitive awareness of the variety of expression to be found in nature. With a relatively light touch, she explored the essence of surrounding spaces particular to the East End, often touching on a particular place: a pond, trees, houses, which were integrated into the painting as though they, too, grew out of the soil. . . .”
While Ms. Potter exhibited her work throughout the United States and in London during a more than four-decade career, she was a fixture in East End galleries, among them Elaine Benson, Lizan-Tops, Vered, and Ms. Bujese’s Newtown Lane venue.
As an integral part of the artistic community here, she donated many works to Southampton Hospital, painted plates for the Retreat’s Artists Against Abuse auctions, and also was a volunteer driver for Meals on Wheels. A music lover who played the flute, she drew the signature William Morris-style artwork used on programs over the years by the Choral Society of the Hamptons.
Helen Harrison, director of the Pollock-Krasner House and Study Center, said, “In addition to being a friend and a generous donor to the Pollock-Krasner House collection, to which she gave works by Alfonso Ossorio, Costantino Nivola, Stanley William Hayter, and Reuben Kadish, she was a gifted painter whose landscapes captured the essences of the places she loved.”
She was among LTV’s first production class in 1986, when public access television was in its infancy. With Genie Henderson, she launched a series called “Meet Your Neighbor, Neighbor,” which was hosted by Jeffrey Potter, the writer who was her husband from 1981 until his death in 2012. She directed programs, served on the LTV board, edited its newsletter, and created dozens of shows for cultural groups. “She brought so much originality to LTV, lifting the often amateur efforts of the rest of us into a new video art form,” Ms. Henderson, LTV’s archivist, said.
She was born in Glen Cove on Feb. 6, 1940, to Clifford M. Bowden and the former Isabel Hamilton. She attended Radcliffe College and studied at the Art Students League in Manhattan. She maintained an apartment in New York City for many years, “particularly for opera and other cultural things,” according to her stepdaughter Manon (Madeleine) Potter. East Hampton was her home from the early 1970s until 2014, when she returned to the city. She and her husband lived in a small house on Sag Harbor Road in East Hampton, where she had a separate studio and he wrote in an outbuilding. They also spent 15 summers in Nova Scotia.
Isabel Carmichael, a longtime friend, said that as a very young person she was struck by Ms. Potter’s beauty, elegance, charm, and wit. She said Ms. Potter was one of the first people diagnosed here with Lyme disease and that she had remained stoical about the effects of treatment.
Ms. Potter is survived by two sisters, Linda Laux of Washington, D.C., and Marybeth Bowden of New York City, and four adult stepchildren. In addition to Manon Potter of East Hampton, they are Job Potter of East Hampton, Gayle Potter Basso of Heber, Ariz., and Horatio Potter of Wilsall, Mont., and New York City.
Arrangements for a memorial service will be announced at a later date.