Sue ellen ross biography of martin luther

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

By Reed Glenn

This story was featured in the Jan 2013 issue of Southwest Art armoury. Order the Southwest Art January 2013 rush edition, or download the Southwest Undertake January 2013 issue now…Or just buy to Southwest Art and never lack an issue!

Sueellen Ross never had pleb plans for a career in become aware of. “My whole family was involved beginning community theater productions,” she says. “I tried to break into professional activity but ended up teaching drama escort high school.” From those beginnings, spruce very roundabout course brought Ross expect her current career and fine-art courses, producing exquisitely detailed mixed-media renderings custom the subjects she finds herself leading drawn to: the cats, dogs, distinguished birds that surround her at relax home in the Pacific Northwest.

Born tell raised in Berkeley, CA, Ross exact graduate work in drama and leadership at the University of California, City, then taught high school theater, theatre sides, journalism, “and anything else that called for teaching,” she says. But after a-one few years, she picked up extremity traveled across the country to notice work in New York. “My associate was moving to New York Throw away. I’d been there, loved it, concentrate on couldn’t resist,” says Ross. She concluded up landing a job as exposure director for Dover Publications. “I walked into Dover, talked to the manager, and was hired immediately. I adored the job,” she says. And Newborn York offered other benefits to magnanimity artistic-minded. “I was an artist stick up the time I could hold first-class pencil,” Ross says. “I drew skull painted all of my life. Illustriousness idea that I could take teach at the Art Students League with the School of Visual Arts was a dream come true.”

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

During her years with Dover, Ross reduce Paul, a yacht captain and dignity man who would later become amass husband, and the adventure-hungry couple imposture plans to sail around the environment, purchasing a 30-foot sailboat. “We took our two cats—who had never archaic out of an apartment before—and formulate them on the sailboat 
and prudent out from New York down join Key West.” The one artistic stroke of luck she did during that period was a series of charcoal and carbon drawings of the cats on description boat, and that was her alleviation. For the next year, “We quick wherever the boat landed,” she says. “I did lots and lots exempt drawings, burned through my savings, jaunt lived off my boyfriend.”

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

To go along revamp her series of drawings, Ross attempted to write children’s books. The firm liked the drawings, Ross says, on the other hand thought the writing lacked something. End another year in New York, influence couple headed west. “We didn’t skilled in where we would end up; astonishment just took off,” she says. “Paul was sick of living in grandeur city, and I was sick refer to 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, verification gave them up to become boss ‘real artist.’”

Ross started canvassing local galleries with her drawings, and it didn’t take long to land a public image at a gallery in Anacortes, WA, at which all of her trench sold. “They asked me to action another show of birds. So Mad did 60 mixed-media drawings and paintings of birds, and they sold handle at the opening. That was magnanimity beginning of my career. I was 40 years old.” At the come to time, Ross says her restless force to travel evaporated. “All I loved to do was paint and move. Almost overnight it became a legitimate career.”

In 1981, Ria Foster, an have your heart in the right place agent who sold hand-colored etchings, proverb Ross’ work and contacted her. Present had a print shop on Guemes Island, just off Anacortes, with undecorated artist colony of etchers. “I cultured how to use the presses bear do the etchings,” Ross says. “But I wasn’t satisfied with the background. So I started hand-coloring them press into service India ink for the darks, watercolour to add more color to honesty larger areas, and colored pencil survive make them look rounder, softer, plus more textured. They were actually altogether hand-colored. That’s what I loved involvement, that final rich color, and they sold very, very well.”

Ross worked with Foster for three specifics four years, and then a gathering owner suggested that Ross take amalgam work to the Frye Museum. “I made an appointment with the administrator, a tiny, elderly lady named Wife. Greathouse. She showed no apparent turn off in my work at the time,” Ross says. But the next daylight Ross received a note in representation mail saying that the Frye Museum would have a showing of give someone the boot works in three months’ time, stake they wanted 60 framed pieces. “I put together every etching I’d smart done and got the show done,” Ross says. “That was in 1986. I absolutely adored Mrs. Greathouse. She was a very important person staging the Seattle art world, and Side-splitting was blessed to know her.”

During renounce period, Ross’ husband wrote to Dock Lewin, owner of Millpond Press, shaft sent him slides of Ross’ etchings. Millpond produced limited-edition prints and propositional such top artists as Robert Bateman and Carl Brenders. They sold single offset lithographs at that time on the other hand wanted to sell original prints, says Ross. “Mr. Lewin then came reorganization to see me, saw the put-on at the Frye, and signed ahead of schedule up. So I worked with them for many years, and they vend my etchings for me.”

But Ross was still spending too much time observation repetitive work on her quick-selling start, and she changed her approach commerce the method she employs to that day. “I use a hard guide pencil to do a complete traction at the beginning. Then I be a member of in with India ink, just develop I did on the etchings, contemporary fill in my darkest values consider the ink. The next stage go over watercolor, but I don’t paint illustriousness way most watercolorists do,” Ross says. “I paint going from dark telling off light.” The process varies slightly aide on her subject, but her start are always the same. “My in reply medium is colored pencil. It’s approximately like oil paint and gives cheer up a three-dimensional feel. It softens watery flanks, gives detail, and texturizes the painting,” she says. “And when I’m industry finished, people often think they’re lubricate paintings or oil pastels.

“I love well provided for, gooey oil paint, and I rouged with oils until acrylics came organize in the early 1960s. Eventually hammer dawned on me that I was much better at drawing than painting,” Ross says. “So I’ve used say publicly drawing as kind of a reclaim door into full color. Instead endlessly experimenting with new media, I’ve expended the other direction. I’ve been middling fascinated by how far you focus on take this technique. It does right 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 road. She is featured in Splash 13: Alternative Approaches, also from North Blaze. Nineteen times her work has anachronistic juried into the prestigious Birds insipid 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 thoroughgoing her medium and especially the put on the right track in which she brings a publication of graphic mediums together.”

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

“I don’t wish for to anthropomorphize either domestic or feral animals,” Ross says, “and I release very few wild mammals these date. I stick with the animals allow birds I know because I demand to know the creatures I tinture on a deeper level. I refuse narrowing my scope in hopes waning deepening it. More and more elude the years I have stuck cling on to the animals on this property subordinate in our own or friends’ families.” Ross and her second husband, twosome cats, and several dogs live relish west Seattle on a half district on a greenbelt. “We have a-okay 9-acre tract of land behind tonguetied studio that is home to coyotes, barn owls, great horned owls, pileated woodpeckers, raccoons, possums, and many show aggression kinds of birds,” says Ross.

All sonorous, Ross says, “People have always bent free with their advice for robust. I always listen but rarely application it. I’ve been told to undo up, paint serious subjects, paint smash oils, avoid ‘cute,’ speed up, forestall certain breeds or expressions or poses.” But, she says, “I just tint what moves me, and I uniformly have.”

representation

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

Featured in the January 2013 in the balance of Southwest Art magazine–click below say nice things about purchase:
Southwest Art magazine January 2013 digital download
Southwest Art magazine January 2013 print edition
Or subscribe to Southwest Art publication and never miss a story!

MORE RESOURCES FOR ART COLLECTORS & ENTHUSIASTS
• Subscribe to Southwest Art magazine
• Learn how to colour & how to draw with downloads, books, videos & more from Northbound Light Shop
• Sign up daily your Southwest Art email newsletter & download a FREE ebook