Sylvia Plimack Mangold was born in New York City. She studied at Cooper Union and at Yale University Art School where she got her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1961. She married artist Robert Mangold after her graduation and they had two children, James and Andrew. Mangold is known for her intensely observed paintings of trees.
Mangold was influenced by Georgia O’Keeffe, Rene Magritte, Edward Hopper, William Harnett, Jasper Johns and Philip Pearlstein, among others. She served as instructor of painting and drawings at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 1974, she travelled to Tuscany, Italy.
She and her husband live and work in Washingtonville, NY. Her main workplace is a building without electricity set on a windblown hill overlooking the Hudson River.
