Having a career that spanned over five decades, Simon is best known for his abstract oil on canvas paintings, specifically 715 Washington St., which portrayed his apartment building in the Greenwich Village area of Manhattan that also acted as an artist salon.
in 1963, he was also a cultural affairs officer in Kabul, Afghanistan, and Colombo, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon).
As an officer, he could not accept the money personally and donated all proceeds to the Abu Simbel Temple Restoration Fund.
Her parents were Viola Estelle (née Booker) and Stephen Gill Spottswood, an African American Episcopal Zion minister.
[3] Spottswood graduated from Dunbar High School in Washington, D.C., and attended Livingston College, her church's denominational institution.
[2] While studying at NYU, Simon was mentored by Hale Woodruff, a prominent African-American educator and painter.
It was in the thriving artistic community as an NYU student that Simon honed his skills and transitioned from traditional figurative works to Abstraction.
[4][2] The rather large and prominent apartment building was portrayed by Simon in the painting titled after the address.
He used oil on canvas while also taking some sand from the local playground his children played on and put it in the corner of the painting.