Maud Gatewood

Maud Florance Gatewood is considered by art historians, curators, museum directors, and collectors as one of the most important painters in North Carolina history. She grew up in Caswell County, North Carolina, just across the Virginia State line. Gatewood studied with Carson Davenport at Averett College. She earned her B.A. in fine arts in 1954 form the Women’s College of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and completed an M.A. in painting at Ohio State University. She was a professor at Averett University in Danville, Virginia.

 

Later in her career, she received a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Salzburg, Austria. She exhibited widely in the southeastern United States throughout her career and won numerous awards for her work. Her life and work was chronicled in an hour-long documentary, Gatewood: Facing the Canvas, which was produced by UNC-TV. The Weatherspoon Art Gallery of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro held a Gatewood retrospective exhibition in 1994 that covered 40 years of her painting. The exhibition later traveled to five museums throughout the South. Gatewood was honored by UNCG with an honorary doctorate in fine arts in 1999.