Artist Statement
My artwork expands traditional painting into sculpture and installation, embracing the decorative as a potent space for meaning. My imagery and narratives amplify what has often been marginalized—ornamentation and sentimentality—to undermine hierarchies that have long privileged austerity and control in visual culture. Likewise, I hijack materials such as glitter, watercolor, plastic diamond dot kits, paper clay, and scrapbooking supplies to question notions of value and legitimacy in art.About
Ursula Gullow is a visual artist living in Asheville, NC. She received a BA in Sociology from the State University of New York at New Paltz, NY (1994) and an MFA in Studio Art from East Tennessee State University in 2024.
Gullow began exhibiting her paintings in 2001 while living in Seattle, WA. Her work has been included in exhibitions at The Asheville Art Museum (2019) and The Contemporary Art Museum in Raleigh (2022). Her social engagement project, One is a Crowd was produced and installed over a period of two months at Artspace in Raleigh, NC (2017), and she was a resident artist at the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts in the summer of 2021. She has also completed artist residencies with The Gil-Society in Akureyri, Iceland (2005), and Jentel Arts Organization in Banner, WY (2019). She has twice received the North Carolina Regional Artist Project Grant (2009, 2019) and she is a 2020 recipient of the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund’s Money for Women Artists Grant.
Gullow taught painting at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College for over ten years before embarking on her MFA candidacy at ETSU in Johnson City, TN. She has been an active participant in the arts community of Asheville, NC, having worked as an arts writer, event organizer, and arts administrator since moving there in 2003. Currently Gullow teaches with the School of Art and Design at Western University in Cullowhee, NC."Her most recent series of work showcases her talent for combining the abstract and the representational - accessibility with visual intrigue." Joanne O'Sullivan, BoldLife Magazine
"The images are emotionally arresting, flecked by joy but shadowed by something decidedly uneasy." Melanie Bianchi, Verve Magazine
"Every brushstroke crescendos with energy. Her color choices are vibrant, her narratives open-ended." Connie Bostic, Mountain Xpress
"The finest of her work is simultaneously folksy, epic, and quietly revolutionary." Douglas Vuncannon, Indyweek.com
