Born: Ontario, Canada
Lives: Nashville, Tennessee
Raised on a farm north of Lake Ontario, Doris Wasserman’s connection to the land and her experience of rural living are inescapably intertwined with her motivation to create. Her background is steeped in creativity. Her early drawings were on her bedroom walls. She was the kid in school who was known as "the artist." Her studies in arts administration and studio arts, a career in public and private art galleries, and administration for an art school and a national arts organization inform her creative practice.
During college, she apprenticed with Edwin Matthews, who apprenticed with A.J. Casson of the Group of Seven. She studied life drawing at the University of Toronto and worked as a medical illustrator at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and as an Exhibits Artist for Cumberland Science Museum. The work she makes today, whether abstract or leaning toward realism, derives from muscle memory based on her early work.
She has received awards and honoraria from Metro Nashville Arts Commission, the Arts & Business Council of Greater Nashville, Southwest Airlines, National Institutes of Health, Metro Nashville Public Library, Tennessee Arts Commission, and the National Arts Program, as well as a public commission from Wondros.
Her work is held in the collections of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University, Country Music Hall of Fame & Museum, Metro Nashville Public Library Art Lending Library, and private collections in Australia, Italy, U.S., and Canada.
