Pegi Nicol MacLeod
1904-1949
Pegi Nicol MacLeod, was born Margaret Kathleen Nicol in Listowell ON, and moved to Ottawa at an early age.
In 1921, Nicol studied at the Art Association of Ottawa school and by 1923 she had moved to Montreal to attend the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. The school’s emphasis on figure study and life drawing would have a profound effect on Nicol and her classmates, who included Paul-Émile Borduas, Lillian Freiman, Goodridge Roberts, Anne Savage, and Marian Scott. In 1932, Nicol won the Willingdon Arts Competition prize for painting.
Her modernist self-portraits, figure studies, paintings of children, still lifes and landscapes are immediately recognizable by a fluidity of form and vibrant colour.
In 1936, Pegi Nicol became a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour and soon joined the Canadian Group of Painters. That same year, she married Norman MacLeod. They relocated to New York City but returned each year to Fredericton NB, where, with Lucy Jarvis, she opened an art centre for aspiring artists at the University of New Brunswick.
Pegi Nicol MacLeod was a gifted painter, teacher, war artist and arts activist. MacLeod died of cancer in New York City in 1949.
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