Sheila Isham, artist whose work spanned continents, dies at 96

NewYork, USA: Sheila Isham, an artist who explored color and culture in vibrant works that drew from her travels around the world and were exhibited a...

NewYork, USA: Sheila Isham, an artist who explored color and culture in vibrant works that drew from her travels around the world and were exhibited at preeminent museums in the United States and galleries abroad, died April 9 at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 96.

The cause was pneumonia, said her son Christopher Isham.

Isham was known to her admirers as an artist whose immense creativity could be contained in "no cubbyhole,” as Washington Post art critic Paul Richard once put it.

Beginning in the 1950s, she accompanied her husband, Foreign Service officer Heyward Isham, on postings to West Berlin, Moscow, Hong Kong, Paris and Haiti, where he served as ambassador from 1974 to 1977.

Isham also spent periods in Washington, where she became known, in Richard’s description, as "one of the most subtle and consistent modernist artists in our area,” and traveled extensively in India.