Acrylic on canvas, signed, titled, and dated 1980 on the verso, self-framed.

60 x 72 in.

The daughter of the Caswell County sheriff, Maud Gatewood was born and raised in the rural town of Yanceyville, NC. She began her art studies at the age of 10 at Averett College in Danville, VA. In 1954 she graduated from North Carolina Woman's College (now UNC-G) with a B.F.A., studying under Gregory Ivy. The next year she earned her M.A. in Painting from Ohio State. And in 1963 she was awarded a Fulbright grant to study under Oskar Kokoschka in Austria.

She returned to North Carolina in 1964, where she was founding head of the Art Department at UNC-Charlotte. She was a faculty member of UNC-Charlotte until 1973. In 1975, she returned to Caswell County and became a professor of art at Averett College, a position she held until her retirement in 1997. Over the course of her life-long career as an art educator, she reached students far beyond NC and VA.

Gatewood traveled extensively throughout her lifetime, but was always drawn back to her Caswell County roots. This painting is characteristic of her instantly recognizable later work, with a tight linear abstracted quality evoking a strong emotional state in the viewer.

Gatewood exhibited widely throughout the Southeast and her work is now one of the most collected and sought after of NC artists. She is represented in numerous public and private collections including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, NC; Asheville Art Museum, Asheville, NC; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC; Nasher Art Museum at Duke University, Durham, NC; and Coca-Cola, Atlanta, GA.

Some grime to wrapped edges of canvas; two minor scratches in lower right quadrant of painting.

$10,000 - 20,000