Born of Canadian parents, Ruth Nickerson received her early education in Ontario at the Simcoe Collegiate Institute from which she was graduated in 1923. She studied art at the Detroit (Michigan) School of Applied Art with Samuel Cashwan, at the National Academy school from 1928 through 1932 with Robert Aitken, and at the Beaux Arts Institute of Design in New York. She studied direct carving techniques with Ahron Ben-Shmuel.
She has taught at the Roerich Museum, the Grand Central School of Art, and the Scarsdale Art Guild. Her major works include a tympanum, The Dispatch Rider (1937), executed for the New Brunswick (New Jersey) Post Office; a glazed terra cotta mural, Oriental Rug Weaving (1941), for the Leaksville (now Eden, North Carolina) Post Office; and the stone group Learning in the children's branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. In 1935 she married artist and industrial designer, Edmund Greacen, Jr. Among the awards she has earned is the Saltus Gold Medal which she won at the National Academy in 1933 for Slav Madonna (cat. no. 285).
She has resided in White Plains, New York, since 1946.
