Harrison Groutage was a multi-skilled, highly talented artist and an influential teacher. He was proficient in painting, watercolor, oils, acrylics, printmaking, ceramic, advertising design, and lettering. In the mid-1940s, after a rural Idaho upbringing, he attended Utah State University and Weber State before he went on to Brigham Young University, where he received a BA degree in 1953. Two years later, he completed an MFA at the University of Utah. That same year, Groutage began teaching art at Utah State University, where he remained for over thirty years. He served as department chair, was honored for his art and his teaching, and will be remembered as the first professor at USU to insist on using nude models for life drawing classes; his true legacy is his hundreds of students.

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