Artist Member Peggy Olsen died in Pacific Grove in mid-May, 2022 at age 84. She was a trailblazer who consistently brought life and expression to the Carmel Art Association since 1986 when she was juried in . Peggy was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Pomona College in 1959 and then went on to get a Masters degree in social work from Columbia University in New York. Returning to California, Peggy worked as a family counselor in the San Francisco Bay Area for seven years. She met her husband, Hebard Olsen, on a Sierra Club boating outing on Tomales Bay. They were delighted to move to the Monterey Bay area when Hebard became a science teacher at Seaside High School. Peggy stayed home with their two children, to whom she was deeply devoted. Throughout her life, Peggy loved cats. She even wrote poems to Tabby, Sassy, and Sweetie. It was not until age forty that Peggy discovered an interest in art and began painting in oil. Despite this late start, she mounted seven solo shows at CAA and was a top seller for over three decades. She continued to paint throughout her life up until the very end. Peggy Olsen demonstrated her versatility as an artist through a wide range of subjects. But the California landscape was always her specialty, from the State's famous golden, rolling hills and fragrant eucalyptus groves to poppy- and wild flower-filled meadows and serene coastlines. Peggy saw these stylized landscapes as a means of expressing new ways of seeing color. It was color she loved most as a painter, and it was color she used in ways that excited the eyes of a long list of avid collectors over the past four decades. Oil paint was her main medium, whether she painted in oils on canvas, board, linen, or heavyweight watercolor paper. Peggy was a breast cancer survivor of thirty years. She and Hebard were able to make many wonderful trips together throughout the world. Peggy's concern for social inequities evolved through her membership in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. She was an avid listener of National Public Radio (KPFA) and Democracy Now from Pacifica Radio.