DescriptionRamona R. Mitchell (American 20th Century) Untitled Abstract Signed Ramona Mitchell Oil on panelDimensions: 27 1/2″ x 27 1/2″Ramona Mitchell is an artist and yoga teacher living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She paints large abstract paintings and is a certified Yasodhara yoga teacher. She was born Rosemarie Hilpert in Berlin, Germany, but spent some of her early childhood years in the Palatine area of Germany, near the French border, to escape the Allied bombs falling on Berlin. After the war, she and her mother and sister became war refugees and eventually found their way to Cairo, Egypt. In Cairo she was accepted at the Academy Des Beaux Arts and began her art studies under Jaro Hilbert for 4 years. This was followed by a scholarship at the University of Georgia, USA, and 4 years in the Art Academy in Kassel, Germany, earning a Master’s degree in Fine Art. After graduation, she briefly returned to Egypt before moving to Nairobi, Kenya, where her mother’s sister lived. In Nairobi, she built an art studio and began exhibiting. It was there that she met her future husband, Alex Mitchell, a fellow artist from Scotland. When Alex received an offer to become Chairman of the Fine Arts Department at Lake Forest College in Illinois, he and Ramona relocated to Lake Forest and spent the next thirty years there. Ramona continued to paint and exhibit. Ramona and Alex retired to Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1994. Alex died in 1996. Today Ramona continues to paint and exhibit, as well as teach yoga in her home studio.
