Sherrie McGraw studied and taught painting and drawing at the famous Art Students League of New York. Recent recognitions include an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco for her accomplishments in the art world and a rare medal from the Butler Institute of American Art, recognizing her Lifetime Achievement in American Art, adding her to the ranks of such distinguished awardees as Leo Castelli, Louise Nevelson and Thomas Hoving. She is widely recognized as a prominent artist of our time.
Her work has been shown in major art institutions throughout the world such as the First American Art Exhibit in Beijing, China, with the America China Oil Painting Artists League (ACOPAL); the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, The Governor’s Gallery at the State Capitol, and The Gilcrease Museum, all in Oklahoma; The Butler Institute of American Art in Ohio; and American Master’s Show at the famed Salmagundi Club of New York. She was vice president of American Women Artists, an art organization that curated a cultural exchange exhibition in Sorrento, Italy in the year 2000.
McGraw authored The Language of Drawing: From an Artist’s Viewpoint, and Then & Now onher retrospective at the Butler. She edited and wrote the foreword to The Drawings of Nicolai Fechin by Russia’s noted authority on Fechin, Galina Tuluzakova, and co-edited her new scholarly treatise on Fechin’s legacy to the art world, Nicolai Fechin—The Art and the Life. She is presently writing an instructional book on painting.