Sally Ross

ONE-SHOT

2017
gesso, matte medium, oil and enamel paint on canvas, with jute webbing and polyester thread
72 x 60 inches

The evolution of my way of working happened through the materials. It was really just playing with the things I had at hand, the things that normally were the parts I would throw away, that created a way in for me. I had a whole lot of scraps of canvas, the parts that you cut away when stretching a canvas for a planned painting. You don’t control these shapes and sizes; they just get tossed aside. Once I began building a new kind of canvas to work on — by sewing these pieces together — it led to other ideas…I was really craving another level of communication with my work, something much more visceral and raw, another kind of language. – Sally Ross

From discarded painting fragments and found fabrics, Sally Ross constructs and deconstructs the painting surface in her sewn canvases. In this work, stitches unite striped mattress ticking, sections of matte canvas, and remnants of an expressionistic painting, which Ross uses as a backdrop for blue-green splatters. By working in large-scale format, she evokes Abstract Expressionism while disrupting the structural foundations of painting. Born in New Jersey, Ross moved away from representational art in 2012 to more directly embrace the materiality of her media. She has exhibited internationally, most recently at the Collezione Maramotti in Reggio Emilia, Italy.