Mary Adams Holmes

[2][3] The academic freedom in her elementary years lead Holmes to focus on drawing and painting until, when she was eight, her teachers urged her to learn to read.

[2] After graduating from Hannah Moore Academy in 1927, Holmes attended Hollins College and earned an undergraduate degree in philosophy.

[5] When Holmes returned to the United States, she enrolled in Johns Hopkins University to study with Max Brödel, a pioneer in medical painting.

"[4] Although the experience impacted her work, she did not complete the program because it was “too bloody and painful.”[2] Holmes began teaching after her divorce, as a single mother requiring an income.

[6] After a year as a teacher at her alma mater, Hannah Moore Academy, she enrolled at the University of Iowa[2] where she earned a double master's degree in painting and art history.

[2] When the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, several professors at the University of Iowa were drafted, offering Holmes the opportunity to take over teaching classes part-way through the semester.

[2] When she went on to teach at UCLA, in 1953, she continued her career in television with a full for-credit course on the local Los Angeles station which enrolled 1,058 students.

[2][8] At UCLA, Holmes became friends with historian Page Smith, who, in the early 1960s, was recruited as the first provost of Cowell College at the new University of California, Santa Cruz.

[12] In 1935, Holmes and her friend, Barbara Betz, took over a former speakeasy and Chinese restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin, and returned it to its original Victorian appearance.

[6] On her property in Santa Cruz where she built her chapel, she kept horses, cows, sheep, goats, chickens, peacocks, dogs, and cats.

[5] In one obituary, John Dizikes, a fellow faculty member at UCSC, remembered Holmes as “an incomparable colleague" who "was delightful company".