Moy Glidden (born Marjory Downs) was born in Harrisburg and raised on West Mermaid Lane in Chestnut Hill. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts with Daniel Garber and at the Barnes Foundation with Earl Horter, and took classes with Arthur B. Carles and Hans Hoffmann. She became an abstract painter shortly after leaving Hoffman's classes in 1941.
Glidden lived in Dover, Massachusetts, where she built a studio next to a small fishpond filled with carp and overlooking a field ringed by trees. The shapes and colors of the surrounding landscape inspired Glidden's work, and color, shape, or line frequently filter into her abstractions. Glidden's work was the subject of a retrospective exhibition organized in 1989 by Woodmere Art Museum.
