Gale Fulton Ross (born 1947) American, "Too Close" Oil and Acrylic on Canvas. Signed and dated 2006 bottom right. Label on reverse. 

Overall Size: 37 1/4 x 37 1/4 in. 

Sight Size: 35 3/4 x 35 3/4 in. 

#5236  

Gale Fulton Ross was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1947, the oldest of nine children in an affluent African-American family. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston, where she explored a wide variety of styles and media including sculpture. She continued her art education at the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco, concentrating in the study of Fine Arts and art history. She studied privately under other artists like Melvin Johnson at the Vesper George School of Art, Cleveland Bellow at the DeYoung Museum, and Pierre Parsus while a resident at the La Napoule Art Foundation in France. Initially trained as an art curator, Ross traveled extensively throughout Africa, Europe, and as far east as China in order to study and paint. In 1984, while an artist in residence in Bellagio, Italy, she produced an exhibition for the Rockefeller Foundation there. In 1993 she was the recipient of an award to work and study in the People’s Republic of China. She developed a reputation early in her career as a highly eclectic portrait artist, and created likenesses of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Justice Thurgood Marshall, Governor Michael Dukakis, and Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber. Ross cited several classical artists as influences on her work, including Michelangelo, Da Vinci, and Rembrandt, as well as modern-day African-American masters such as Charles Wilbert White, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, and Samella Lewis. Her style incorporates both the figurative and the abstract, and often depicts images of African American women. In the 21st Century she settled in Sarasota, Florida, where she continues to make art and created the Fulton-Ross Fund for Visual Artists of Sarasota County to give opportunities and grants to budding artists.