Jill DeGroff

Jill DeGroff is a fine artist who plies her craft at bars and saloons. Over the years, she has captured the modern cocktail era like none other, gaining notoriety among cocktail cognoscenti around the world and becoming a sought-after caricaturist. Her book, LUSH LIFE; Portraits from the Bar, (Mud Puddle Books, 2009), is an anthology of the colorful characters she has met in bars over the years and the tales they told. In 2005, Jill and husband, James Beard mixologist Dale DeGroff, and seven other writers on the subject of drink, established the first cocktail museum in the world: The Museum of the American Cocktail, now part of the National Food & Beverage Institute in New Orleans. Jill’s work is currently on view at Stage Left in New Brunswick, NJ. And can also be viewed online at: http://saloonartist.com/2021-Portfolio.pdf

Artist statement: Back in the day, New York was a mean, gritty, crime-ridden town. This was Joseph Mitchell’s New York. He chronicled characters in the wee hours of the morning: gypsies, fisherman, saloon owners– the underbelly of NY was his mistress and the harbor and what swam in it, his life blood.