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HELL-PURGATORY-PARADISE  the divine comedy

Discovery: The journey one takes on the road to artistic enlightenment
GALE FULTON ROSS is particularly talented at taking on big ideas in her work—and reducing those big ideas to powerful images that are at once simplistic and complex.  Also, Ross’ provocative pen and ink drawings simultaneously evoke a raw sensual-ness and in-your-face American historical reality.  Ross articulates her personal cosmic vision with a stirring fluency:

    A lost artist is taken on a guided pilgrimage through the three realms of the dead:  Hell, (the artistic struggle), Purgatory, (Invisibility, and Paradise, (discovery and Glory).  On her travels she is given the challenge of exploring the darkest recesses of the artistic soul in an effort to understand the root of, imagination, creativity    and, ultimately, discovery. Accompanied through Hell and Purgatory by “Aunt Jemima” the pancake icon, the pair encounters grim and often shocking landscapes, disappointments and sinners as they venture deeper into the throat of Hell.  When they finally re-surface, the two travelers find themselves on the island of Purgatory where those artists awaiting Heaven’s graceful inclusion dwell.

    Artist and guide begin their ascent up the mountain to the gates of Paradise.  Artist and Aunt Jemima part company at this juncture because as an icon of stereotype tied to Limbo, Aunt Jemima cannot be granted access to Paradise.  Sojourner truth, who first appeared in Purgatory, takes the artist into her care and transports her through space and time towards Paradise, and the ineffable mystery of imagination and creativity.

The grand Dante stage allows Ross’ expressive refutation of racism and hatred to freely assess American history.  What we are witnessing from this multifaceted artist, is a dynamic personal upheaval—an artistic anarchy that informed the powerful work of Rivers, and the New Realism of Rauschenberg and Johns in the nineteen-fifties.

Dr. H.R. Hobbs
Collector