[7] Led by Mercedes Matter and George McNeil with support from Mark Rothko,[2] she and the students setup the school on the concept that life drawings should establish the basis of developing artistically.
[3] Fesenmaier met Dutch abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman and spent some time painting in the Netherlands.
[3] Three years later, she was commissioned to create the large sculpture Logbook for the Victoria and Albert Museum's outside forecourt for the exhibition The Birth of a Book;[2][6][8] afterward, the sculpture was moved to High Wycombe by the British Timber Research and Development Association to slowly "deliquesce" back to the earth,[2] to stay within her ecological beliefs.
Fesenmaier painted in acrylic, oil and pastel vigorously onto a canvas or paper, occasionally going towards the abstract, but almost always featuring an element that could be more or less recognizable.
Four years later, Fesenmaier painted Photo Shoot with acrylic and oil on canvas and created the sculpture Trinity from concrete, lead, steel, terracotta and wood.
On June 4, 1960, she married lawyer Frank Griffith Dawson at Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Trinity, New Ulm.
She married David Neil Hodgson, a painter and a student of hers at the Croydon School of Art, on March 7, 1992, at Chelsea Old Town Hall register office.
[1] In her final years, Fsesenmaier was diagnosed with cancer,[8] and died on June 21, 2013, from complications of lymphoma,[2][3][6] at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, London.
[3] Bryan Robertson, an art curator, called Fesenmaier “one of the most gifted and authoritative artists working in Europe” over the previous four decades.