ABOUT THE ARTIST

Betty Ross

Betty Ross is a pillar of the Colorado Springs arts community and was the subject of a major exhibition at the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art in late 2017. Ross has lived and worked in the Pikes Peak region since 1976, working as UCCS Theatreworks’ Costume Designer for many of the past decades alongside her robust practice as a studio artist. Ross’s extensive travels in Europe, Asia, and across the American West have generated ideas for paintings and costumes alike, from the landscape, people, politics, and above all the sense of place she encountered.

Betty Ross, trained as an art historian, has an MA in Theatre from UC Berkeley. Accident and experiment are her friends.

She has exhibited locally at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center, at the Sangre de Christo Arts and Conference Center, in Pueblo, been a member of Spark Gallery in Denver, and won awards in Taos and Kansas City and Loveland.

Three residencies at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson helped connect her with abstract expressionist painting–Michael Goldberg was the main influence. She received an NEA grant to travel to Romania to compare Gypsies (Roma) with artists, and used the data to produce a series of abstract paintings that were exhibited at the Artemesia Gallery in Chicago and the Manitou Art Center in Manitou Springs.

Betty Ross was featured in a major retrospective exhibition at the UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art in 2017, the final exhibition in the historic campus space before moving to the new Ent Center for the Arts.