Recognized as the originator of the watercolor tradition on the West Coast, Millard Sheets was also one of the foremost portrayers of the California scene during the 1930s and 1940s. Multi-talented, Sheets was also active as a muralist, architect, and illustrator. Throughout the course of his long and prolific career, he was also a highly influential teacher, first at Scripps College and later, at the Otis Art Institute.

Sheets was born in Pomona, California, then a small rural town near Los Angeles. After his mother died shortly after his birth, he was raised by his maternal grandparents, who lived on a ranch in Pomona. Following his graduation from high school in 1925, Sheets enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he studied for the next four years. During this period, Sheets' work was influenced by his teachers, F. Tolles Chambers and Clarence Hinkle. He was also inspired by the representational realism of George Bellows and Thomas Hart Benton. Although he worked occasionally in oil, Sheets developed a strong penchant for watercolor painting; indeed, his skills were such that during his second year as a student, Mrs. Chouinard hired him to teach a watercolor class at the Chouinard Institute.

Sheets had his first one-man exhibition at the Newhouse Galleries in Los Angeles in 1929. He then spent a year travelling throughout the United States, Europe, and Central and South America. Returning to California in 1930, he joined the California Water Color Society. He subsequently played a key role in that organization, urging his colleagues to exhibit their work in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and throughout the Eastern United States. By 1931, Sheets had abandoned the spontaneous, impressionist style of his student years in favor of a semi-abstract manner characterized by simplified, rhythmic forms and a subtle but daring palette.

Sheets served as director of the Los Angeles County Fair from 1931 to 1956. In 1932, he joined the art faculty at Scripps College in Claremont, an affiliation that lasted for over two decades. A superior draftsman, Sheets also began producing renderings for local architects. By the mid-1930s, he was also working as a color consultant and in 1937, he designed his first building.

During 1943-1944, Sheets worked as a war artist, covering the Burma-India front for Life magazine. When he returned to California, he continued to teach and exhibit his work, winning numerous awards and prizes. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, he extended his creative activities to include mural decoration. He also continued his interest in architecture, designing the Ahmanson Bank and Trust Company in Los Angeles in 1954. Sheets went on to create over forty designs for Home Savings and Loan buildings in California. He also left Scripps College, assuming the position of director of the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles. Sheets was also a technical advisor for the motion picture Salome (1952) and worked as a production designer for Columbia Pictures.

Sheets travelled extensively throughout the United States, Europe, the Pacific and the Orient. A noted art educator, he conducted painting workshops throughout the world between 1965 and 1985. He also served as an American art specialist for the U.S. Department of State in Turkey and Russia in 1960 and 1961.

Sheets was a member of numerous art societies, such as the American Watercolor Society, the Bohemian Club, the California Water Color Society, the National Academy of Design and the Society of Motion Picture Art Directors.

Sheets died in Gualala, California in 1989. Examples of his work can be found in major public collections throughout America, including the Art Institute of Chicago; the Brooklyn Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.


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