Have A Drink On Maud Gatewood And Support Local Businesses In Blowing Rock, North Carolina - Dec. 5, 2024
Article published in Forbes by Chadd Scott
Early Morning Early June (Six-Panel Polyptych), 1988
Acrylic on canvas
60 x 307 in. (152.4 x 779.78 cm.)
Gift of art from GSK. BRAHM Permanent Collection 2024.002.001
A native of tiny Yanceyville in the north central part of the state, Gatewood’s paintings from the 1950s into the 1990s reveal rural landscapes and people in the midst of transformation while cleverly framing the experience of modern life with acerbic wit and a wealth of empathy.
“Maud Gatewood captured the change that happened in rural North Carolina, moving from an agrarian state to more of an urban state,” Dragisic explained. “She does it in a way that for many would feel soothing and calm, and for some, feels very uncomfortable.”
Gatewood’s name will be unfamiliar to most outside of North Carolina, but her story is a common one. She was an exceptionally talented artist, overlooked outside her home state due to gender, her remove from New York, and her devotion to figurative painting. None of those attributes helped advance an art career during the second half of the 20th century.
She was no hayseed, though, nor artistically isolated.
When attending the Women’s College, later the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, the school had a shockingly progressive art program focused on contemporary art, particularly Abstract Expressionism. She studied Willem de Kooning paintings and saw them up close. Franz Kline visited the school. She met him.
Gatewood’s exhibit page:
The Hard Edge and Soft Line: A Retrospective of Maud Gatewood
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