Georgette Osserman was born in 1950 and raised in New York.

She grew up surrounded by the large exciting fast pace of Manhattan. Her parents, who both adored the arts, took her to theaters, museums, and concerts. In her youth she studied dance and showed an early facility for color and design. This large energy has carried through to her style of painting. Influenced by action painting, surrealism and automaticism, she developed a style which echoes both the action painters of the 1950s, exemplified by Jackson Pollock, as well as the innovative colorists, exemplified by Milton Avery. She received her bachelor degree in psychology graduating with honors from South Hampton College. While there she also studied sculpture with Peter Lipman Wolf, whose sculpture adorned the MOMA garden for many years. After moving on to photography and exhibiting at the college, she was accepted at the University of Southern California graduate studies in film. At that time she was one of only six women in a department of four hundred men. Disheartened by what she saw as Hollywood’s old boy club she and a friend turned their attentions to clothing design.

Their company, “georgette,” began on a shoestring budget of 500 dollars and soon caught the attention of buyers across the country. In New York their clothes were exhibited in the Fifth Avenue windows of Bergdorf Goodman, and Elizabeth Arden, and appeared in the editorials of Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, Mademoiselle, California Apparel and Women’s wear Daily. Though only in their 20’s, Ms Osserman, and Mr. Brown achieved what many in the fashion industry had strived for all their lives. In 1979 they parted ways and Georgette was hired to work at Ranch la Puerta in Tecate Mexico as the assistant to the director. It gave her a chance to reexamine her life and decide on the next chapter.

In 1983 while running a fitness studio in Pacific Heights she decided to resume her passion for the arts and enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute. She was accepted to their Graduate program and attended both the San Francisco Art institute and later the California College of the Arts. She subsequently was invited to study with Christopher Brown and Wayne Thiebaud. Georgette has been teaching in Marin and across the country for the past 25 years. She was recently a guest instructor for the Drake and Redwood High School advanced placement art classes and created a workshop for all the art teachers in Marin. Along with teaching she has gained the respect of her fellow artists by curating and judging competitions like the prestigious Sausalito Art Festival and The Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival.

In 2006 she was invited to be the opening exhibition for the new Sam the Butcher gallery in Ross, California, where she will again show in October 2010. In 2009 she had a show at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. Georgette continues to work and exhibit in and around California as well as in galleries across the country.