This following biography was researched, compiled, and written by Geoffrey K. Fleming, Executive Director, Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV.

MARJORIE VOTEY (May 24, 1893 – February 3, 1971) A.K.A. “M. Votey”

Painter in oil, teacher, school administrator. Born in Detroit, Michigan, the daughter of Grace Rudd (1872 – 1958) and Frank A. Votey (1862 – 1940). She was raised in Michigan where her father was a prominent physician, spending her formative years in Detroit and Grand Rapids.

She attended the University of Michigan, graduating in 1917, and appears to have first worked for a sash company in Detroit, where she was listed as residing in the 1920 federal census. According to an interview she gave in the 1960s, Votey began painting around 1926. By 1930 she had joined her parents in Ada, Michigan, but did not remain there long, taking what was likely one of her first teaching positions in Rockville Center, Long Island, New York, where she was residing in 1935.

Votey had returned to Michigan by the time of the 1940 federal census when she was listed as a schoolteacher residing as a lodger in the home of William H. Baker in Pontiac. She began her teaching career there as an elementary instructor and eventually worked her way up to the position of principal at the Walnut Lake School in Birmingham, Michigan. Later she moved with her widowed mother to Deepwater Point and secured a position teaching in the nearby Traverse City public school system. Votey wintered regularly in Longboat Key, Florida, where she continued her studies in drawing with Isabel White (1924 – 1994).

Following her retirement, Votey almost exclusively devoted her time to her love of flowers and to painting. During the 1950s and 1960s she was exhibiting her works both with the Longboat Key Art Center in Florida and with the Northwestern Michigan Artists and Craftsmen organization in Traverse City. In the autumn of 1966 she moved to Geneva, Illinois. Marjorie Votey died in Geneva, Illinois at the Anna Baum Christian Science Home on Wednesday, the 3 rd of February 1971 at the age of seventy-seven years. She was cremated locally with burial occurring in Geneva, though it is not clear where. Her obituary noted that “She was known for her creative work and interest in children.”

Very little is currently known about her work as a painter, one recently identified example was impressionist in nature and signed “M. Votey.” In a 1960s interview she noted that she painted “everyday scenes,” and remarked further: “I want to reach the average person. I want to put something in his or her life that was not there before, to uplift or inspire…” Votey was a member of the Northwestern Michigan Artists and Craftsmen (as a founding member of what was then known as the Northwest Michigan Arts and Crafts Club) and served as its president for a period of time.

Though there are undoubtedly other exhibitions in which Votey participated, those presently known include the following: Arts and Crafts Exhibition, Traverse City, MI, 1957, 1964;Traverse City Golf and Country Club, Traverse City, MI, 1963; National Bank and Trust Company, Traverse City, MI, 1965 (solo); Traverse City Public Library, Traverse City, MI, 1966 (solo); Longboat Key Art Center, Sarasota, FL, 1960s (and earlier).

Votey’s works are not currently known to be in the collection of any public institutions. Her works reside in private collections throughout the United States.