SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- Brian Gross Fine Art announced that New Mexico artist Johnnie Winona Ross has joined the gallery. Over a career of nearly five decades, Johnnie Winona Ross has pushed the boundaries of minimal painting into new territory. Working in the lineage of Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin, Ross creates painterly abstractions in which subtle variations in surface and underlying color interplay with the exquisite geometry of his compositions.
Reductive only in appearance, Johnnie Winona Ross’ surfaces are built up through the addition of hundreds of layers of paint, which are then meticulously burnished flat and polished to a dull luster. Similarly, while appearing purely abstract, his layers of horizontal bands of whites over vertical seeps of muted color recall the feeling of the Southwest, where he has lived for nearly 20 years. Taken as a whole, Ross’ paintings exist in a suspended transience, simultaneously present in form while absent through the dissolution of painting’s surface.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Johnnie Winona Ross studied painting at Washington University in St. Louis and later received his MFA from the University of Illinois in 1973. After graduating, Ross taught for 22 years at the Maine College of Art, Portland, ME. In 1995 he received an International Individual Support Grant from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation.
Immediately after receiving his MFA, Johnnie Winona Ross had his first one-person exhibition at the Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christie in 1974. Since then has regularly participated in solo and group exhibitions across the United States. Ross’ paintings can be found numerous private and public collections, including the Cleveland Museum of Art, OH; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY; New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe, NM; University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM; Tamarind Institute, Albuquerque, NM; Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art, Roswell, NM; Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, NM; Roswell Museum of Art, Roswell, NM; Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME; Allentown Art Museum, Allentown, PA; Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Sedalia, MO; Lannan Foundation, Santa Fe, NM; and Sori Arts Center of Jeollabuk-do, Jeonbuk, Korea, among others.
