Audrey Mishler Jones, PhD., died on September 18, 2023, in Boston, Massachusetts, at the age of 92. Audrey was a painter and a psychoanalyst. She was devoted to each of these vocations and excelled at both. She was an avid reader and closely followed current events and politics, being particularly worried in the years before her death of the risks to our country and the world from figures such as Donald Trump. Audrey had boundless and generous love for her family; her brother, Elliot, who pre-deceased her, her nephews Paul and Mark, her great-nephews Max, Raphael, and Nikolai, her nieces-in-law Gerrie, Renee, and Shauna, and, though she never got to meet him, her beautiful great-great nephew Maceo. Audrey loved and was loved by Elliot's wife, Anita Mishler, who predeceased her, and then by Elliot's love and life partner Vicky Steinitz, and was also warmly welcomed into a new extended family by Vicky's daughters Rebecca and Sarah and their families.

Audrey was born in Astoria, Queens, NYC, in 1931, to Rae Shipman Mishler and Max Mishler, both of whom had emigrated from Eastern Europe as children, and she grew up poor during the Great Depression and WW II in a household that also included her older brother, Elliot, and, for several early years, her beloved grandfather, Louis Shipman. Audrey attended the City College of New York (when tuition was free), studying Psychology. Among other professors, she studied with Dr. Kenneth B. Clark who was at that time researching the impact of racism on Black children, work that later became a core part of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision in 1954. She went on to Clark University for graduate school in Psychology, achieving a Masters in 1954 and her Ph.D. in 1961. Audrey then did post-doctoral studies in psychoanalysis at the Boston Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, earning her Certificate in Psychoanalysis in 1984.

Art and painting were central to Audrey's life from an early age. From her 20's through most of her adult life she engaged in serious study of painting, including many years of study at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and spent much of her time painting. Her work often included carefully arranged still-life interior settings, with bold colors and with background glimpses through windows of the outside world, typically, the waterfront in Boston where she lived in a loft on a wharf for many years, or the Boston skyline across the harbor from Chelsea, where she resided for decades. In 1952 Audrey started spending summers at the artist colony on Monhegan Island in Maine where she painted and also got to know many of the artists who had their studios there. She returned to Monhegan for many years, into her 70's. Among others, she met the NYC-based artist Joseph DeMartini on Monhegan in the early or mid-1950's and began a close relationship which lasted for years in which she was DeMartini's muse and frequent subject. Audrey had vast knowledge of art and artists, loved visiting museums and galleries in Boston and New York and in cities throughout Europe where she traveled, including Moscow, Paris, Barcelona, and Athens. She had keen and detailed insights, technical and artistic, into the work of other artists.

As a psychologist and analyst, Audrey was devoted to her work as a therapist as well as the role of teacher and supervisor of younger therapists. In addition to her private practice, she spent years associated with the Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis as an adjunct faculty member, involved with teaching and with various faculty committees and activities. While her own practice included patients of all ages, her colleagues noted a particular intuitive ability to work with and help children. She continued seeing patients until she was in her 80's.

Audrey lived an independent and fascinating life as a single professional woman for most of her adult life.  She may not have thought of herself as a role model for younger women, but she was.

Audrey was loved by her family. She was a wonderful aunt. Mark recalls, as a child, always being able to eat "fluffernutters" (sandwiches with peanut butter and marshmallow fluff) when visiting Audrey, which was not the type of food permitted at home. Audrey frequently visited Paul and Gerrie and her great-nephew Max in New York City.  Dressed in her "city" clothes and shoes she scampered up and down rocks and hills following Max through Central Park.  Both Paul and Mark remember Audrey taking them to see the Rolling Stones when they were teenagers (it was the Beggars Banquet tour) which they enjoyed though Audrey did not. The whole family remembers the wonderful holiday dinners Audrey would host every year with the smell of roast lamb filling her apartment along with other delicious food and the warmth, pride, and interest with which Audrey greeted every new interest or accomplishment of her nephews and great-nephews. Audrey also loved and was loved in return by members of the Lessuck family, her in-laws, who welcomed and included her in many Thanksgiving celebrations and other family events.

The family is grateful for the care, attention, and love shown by all of the staff members at the assisted living facilities she lived in during her final years, Sophia Snow House and Chestnut Park at Cleveland Circle. The family is also thankful for the medical care Audrey received in her final years when she was in and out of the hospital, at Beth Israel, Faulkner, and other facilities.

Audrey will be missed.

If you wish to make a donation in Audrey's memory, please do so to a charity of your choice, or to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at https://go.tufts.edu/AudreyMJones, to Sophia Snow Place at https://www.sophiasnowplace.org/donations, or to the Peace Action Education Fund at https://www.peaceactioneducationfund.org/ .