Today, August 15th, we celebrate the life and times of Alice Taylor Gafford (August 15, 1886 - October 27, 1981); an African American nurse and artist. From Los Angeles, she was one of ten children of Benjamin and Alice Armstead Taylor, and the only one who showed an interest in art. She spent twenty-five years in the nursing profession before deciding to pursue her first love, painting. Gafford attended and graduated from the Otis Art Institute, receiving attention from critics when she won second prize for one of her paintings at the Stendahl Gallery on Wilshire Blvd. She earned a teaching certificate at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1951 and taught art in LA county schools for five years. From a group of five hundred artists who submitted their work for the Sixth Annual Southern California Exhibition in 1968, Gafford was among the seventy-nine left to participate with New York critic Clement Greenberg. On her eighty-first birthday, Gafford was commissioned to paint the portraits of twelve famous black Americans for the gallery of the Family Saving Bank. She played an influential role in the founding and development of a number of pioneering art groups in southern California, including the Val Verde Art and Hobby Show that now bears her name (the Alice Gafford Art and Hobby Show). She received over twenty-five awards from various private, city, county and state organizations, and her painting The Tea Party is in the collection at the Long Beach Museum. Alice Gafford is buried in the Los Angeles National Cemetery next to her husband Louis Sherman Gafford, whom she married in 1928.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 05:44:32 +0000
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