Jo Ann Hambrick Portrait Drawings and Watercolors

Jo Ann Hambrick, an artist, writer and educator, was born on June 25, 1925 in Tulsa, Oklahoma to Ann Lester Hambrick of Texas and Fitzhugh Lee Hambrick of Alabama. She grew up in Greeley, Colorado, where her father, a well-known expert in the field of elementary education, taught at Colorado State College of Education. Hambrick held a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Illustration from the Art Institute of Chicago and a Master of Arts degree from Colorado State College of Education. The Chicago Art Institute also awarded her the Anna Louise Raymond Foreign Travel Fellowship for study in Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1947–48. Hambrick taught art in Greeley, Colorado, before marrying her husband, Hafez Farmayan, in 1949. In the early 1950s, while her husband was completing his post-graduate studies at Georgetown University in Washington D.C., Hambrick began teaching elementary school in Arlington, Virginia. She continued to teach art in elementary and high schools there and was eventually appointed Art Supervisor of public schools in the District of Columbia. In 1954, when Hambrick was appointed professor at the University of Tehran, they moved to Iran. During the twelve years that she and her husband lived in Iran, she was able to cultivate an extraordinary understanding and knowledge of the Persian culture and language. In Iran, she served briefly as a consultant for the Architectural Services Division, U.S. Mission to Iran and the Institute for Administrative Affairs at the University of Tehran. In 1968, she was awarded the "Special Imperial Prize for Literature," by the late Shah of Iran, for her illustrations of a traditional Persian folktale entitled The Uninvited Guests. In addition to creating many works of art in oil and pastel, Hambrick was the author of a children's book, The Wonderful Lamp from Isfahan, by McGraw-Hill Publishers, 1974. She died on April 30, 2005, of renal failure, in Austin. She was 79, and had lived in Austin for over 38 years.

(Biography provided by Robert Azensky Fine Art)