Eleanor Dickinson received the BA in fine arts from UT in 1952 and the MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1982. She studied at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1961 to 1963. She served as professor of art at the California College of Arts and Crafts from 1971 until her retirement in 2003. She served additionally as director of galleries.
She is the coauthor and sole illustrator of Revival (1974), and she provided the drawings for The Complete Fruit Cookbook (1972). She has had solo exhibitions of her paintings in the Smithsonian Institute Traveling Exhibition (1975–81); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; De Young Museum of San Francisco; Palace of Art Museum in Krakow, Poland; Tennessee State Museum; Oakland Museum; Corcoran Gallery of Art; and the Galleria de Arte y Libros in Monterrey, Mexico. Her paintings are in the permanent collections of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institute, the National Museum of American Art, the Corcoran Gallery, the Archives of American Art, the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
She received the Master Drawing Award of the National Society of Arts and Letters in 1983; the Graphics Award from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 1973 and 1975; the purchase prize of the Butler Institute of American Art in 1960; the President’s Prize and Drawing Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1959; Emmy Award, consultant and participant in True Believers, WKRN in 1988.
Growing up, her family home was the Victorian VanGilder house on Circle Park.