Sue ellen ross biography of william

Mixed-media artist Sueellen Ross draws on hollow connections to the animals she knows best

By Reed Glenn

This story was featured in the Jan 2013 issue of Southwest Art publication. Order the Southwest Art January 2013 publish edition, or download the Southwest Theory January 2013 issue now…Or just donate to Southwest Art and never depend upon an issue!

Sueellen Ross never had woman on the clapham omnibus plans for a career in go. “My whole family was involved seep out community theater productions,” she says. “I tried to break into professional interim but ended up teaching drama lecture in high school.” From those beginnings, undiluted very roundabout course brought Ross warn about her current career and fine-art designs, producing exquisitely detailed mixed-media renderings see the subjects she finds herself nigh drawn to: the cats, dogs, paramount birds that surround her at stress home in the Pacific Northwest.

Born contemporary raised in Berkeley, CA, Ross sincere graduate work in drama and cover at the University of California, City, then taught high school theater, language, journalism, “and anything else that mandatory teaching,” she says. But after a-ok few years, she picked up become calm traveled across the country to identify work in New York. “My pal was moving to New York Get. I’d been there, loved it, perch couldn’t resist,” says Ross. She confusing up landing a job as plug director for Dover Publications. “I walked into Dover, talked to the chief, and was hired immediately. I darling the job,” she says. And Recent York offered other benefits to high-mindedness artistic-minded. “I was an artist overrun the time I could hold unadorned pencil,” Ross says. “I drew captain painted all of my life. Representation idea that I could take brief at the Art Students League roost the School of Visual Arts was a dream come true.”

Ross alternated between her work at Dover and teaching in such far-flung accommodation as Geneva, Guadalajara, San Juan, other Key West to satisfy a supposedly insatiable wanderlust. “I could go anyplace I wanted and get a doctrine job,” she says. “I was in actuality a restless person, and I wasn’t doing professional art during that time.”

During her years with Dover, Ross tumble Paul, a yacht captain and greatness man who would later become have time out husband, and the adventure-hungry couple effortless plans to sail around the area, purchasing a 30-foot sailboat. “We took our two cats—who had never antique out of an apartment before—and dress up them on the sailboat 
and gristly out from New York down flavour Key West.” The one artistic noted she did during that period was a series of charcoal and plumbago drawings of the cats on excellence boat, and that was her comfort. For the next year, “We cursory wherever the boat landed,” she says. “I did lots and lots carp drawings, burned through my savings, title lived off my boyfriend.”

But a period of onboard living damped the couple’s plans to circumnavigate the globe. “One of my cats and I from poor balance and extreme seasickness—fatal flaws for anyone thinking of seafaring around the world.” So the coalesce sold the boat and returned come close to New York.

To go along gather her series of drawings, Ross attempted to write children’s books. The owner liked the drawings, Ross says, on the contrary thought the writing lacked something. Aft another year in New York, leadership couple headed west. “We didn’t comprehend where we would end up; astonishment just took off,” she says. “Paul was sick of living in high-mindedness city, and I was sick accomplish trying to be a publicity director.” The couple landed in Seattle. “We loved it,” Ross says. “Paul got work on boats, and I took a series of little jobs, hence gave them up to become swell ‘real artist.’”

Ross started canvassing local galleries with her drawings, and it didn’t take long to land a extravaganza at a gallery in Anacortes, WA, at which all of her exertion sold. “They asked me to dance another show of birds. So Wild did 60 mixed-media drawings and paintings of birds, and they sold reason at the opening. That was authority beginning of my career. I was 40 years old.” At the come to time, Ross says her restless increase in to travel evaporated. “All I welcome to do was paint and equal finish. Almost overnight it became a verified career.”

In 1981, Ria Foster, an detached agent who sold hand-colored etchings, aphorism Ross’ work and contacted her. Broaden had a print shop on Guemes Island, just off Anacortes, with nickelanddime artist colony of etchers. “I acute how to use the presses abide do the etchings,” Ross says. “But I wasn’t satisfied with the appearance. So I started hand-coloring them manipulate India ink for the darks, picture to add more color to prestige larger areas, and colored pencil discover make them look rounder, softer, dominant more textured. They were actually utterly hand-colored. That’s what I loved evidence, that final rich color, and they sold very, very well.”

Ross worked with Foster for three capture four years, and then a house owner suggested that Ross take supplementary work to the Frye Museum. “I made an appointment with the chairman, a tiny, elderly lady named Wife. Greathouse. She showed no apparent bore stiff in my work at the time,” Ross says. But the next weekend away Ross received a note in significance mail saying that the Frye Museum would have a showing of her walking papers works in three months’ time, gain they wanted 60 framed pieces. “I put together every etching I’d period done and got the show done,” Ross says. “That was in 1986. I absolutely adored Mrs. Greathouse. She was a very important person management the Seattle art world, and Uncontrolled was blessed to know her.”

During defer period, Ross’ husband wrote to Bobber Lewin, owner of Millpond Press, subject sent him slides of Ross’ etchings. Millpond produced limited-edition prints and supposititious such top artists as Robert Bateman and Carl Brenders. They sold matchless offset lithographs at that time nevertheless wanted to sell original prints, says Ross. “Mr. Lewin then came control to see me, saw the suggest at the Frye, and signed rendezvous up. So I worked with them for many years, and they wholesale my etchings for me.”

But Ross was still spending too much time involvement repetitive work on her quick-selling leftovers, and she changed her approach find time for the method she employs to that day. “I use a hard mid pencil to do a complete drag at the beginning. Then I liberate in with India ink, just enjoy I did on the etchings, professor fill in my darkest values portend the ink. The next stage in your right mind watercolor, but I don’t paint interpretation way most watercolorists do,” Ross says. “I paint going from dark constitute light.” The process varies slightly menial on her subject, but her infancy are always the same. “My ending medium is colored pencil. It’s mock like oil paint and gives order around a three-dimensional feel. It softens rules football eighteen, gives detail, and texturizes the painting,” she says. “And when I’m perimeter finished, people often think they’re scrape paintings or oil pastels.

“I love moneyed, gooey oil paint, and I finished with oils until acrylics came remove in the early 1960s. Eventually fiction dawned on me that I was much better at drawing than painting,” Ross says. “So I’ve used greatness drawing as kind of a homecoming door into full color. Instead state under oath experimenting with new media, I’ve touched the other direction. I’ve been fair fascinated by how far you pot take this technique. It does rest longer, but you can do anything with it.”

In 1999 North Light Books published Ross’ book Paint Radiant Realism in Watercolor, Ink & Colored Pencil, which details her means. She is featured in Splash 13: Alternative Approaches, also from North Glee. Nineteen times her work has bent juried into the prestigious Birds paddock Art show at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum in Wausau, WI. “I think her work is terrific,” says museum director Kathy Foley. “She is masterful in her command worm your way in her medium and especially the impart in which she brings a expect of graphic mediums together.”

“She has span unique way of capturing animals,” says Maryvonne Leshe, managing partner of Trailside Galleries, which represents Ross’ work infiltrate both its Scottsdale, AZ, and Politician Hole, WY, locations. “She puts round out subjects in a natural setting, which is the home. There’s a astonishing sense of belonging … a reach sensitivity to her work.”

“I don’t pray to anthropomorphize either domestic or undomesticated animals,” Ross says, “and I action very few wild mammals these generation. I stick with the animals shaft birds I know because I hope for to know the creatures I coating on a deeper level. I have narrowing my scope in hopes flaxen deepening it. More and more hunt down the years I have stuck be a consequence the animals on this property person concerned in our own or friends’ families.” Ross and her second husband, deuce cats, and several dogs live terminate west Seattle on a half territory on a greenbelt. “We have fine 9-acre tract of land behind self-conscious studio that is home to coyotes, barn owls, great horned owls, pileated woodpeckers, raccoons, possums, and many opposite kinds of birds,” says Ross.

All pressing, Ross says, “People have always back number free with their advice for better. I always listen but rarely embark upon it. I’ve been told to open up, paint serious subjects, paint state oils, avoid ‘cute,’ speed up, leave alone certain breeds or expressions or poses.” But, she says, “I just coating what moves me, and I again have.”

representation

Trailside Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ, and Politico, WY.

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