Winter Light

The Artistic Vision of Bernice Cross

Bernice Cross was an American painter and artist born in Iowa City, United States. Throughout a professional career spanning five decades, she developed a style characterized by a sense of fantasy, humor, and a deceptive simplicity. Her work often balanced realism with abstraction, frequently employing a youthful, whimsical spirit that appeared childlike yet remained sophisticated in its composition and use of color. Her subject matter included genre paintings of circus people, characters from fairy tales, still lifes of flower arrangements, and portraits. In her later years, her portraits often took on a dark, almost monochrome quality, depicting figures within dreamlike, grey environments.

Technically, Cross was an adventurous experimentalist. She explored various surface textures, sometimes leaving parts of the canvas bare or building up layers of pigment with a brush and knife, occasionally adding mica or sand to her works. In one notable instance, she departed from traditional canvas or board to create a painting on velvet. Her ability to organize elements and utilize color contrasts allowed her to create an integrated whole, maintaining a recognizable signature throughout her evolving body of work.

Exhibitions and Instruction

Cross was an active participant in the Washington, D.C. art scene, exhibiting her work in numerous solo and group shows at venues such as the Phillips Gallery, the Corcoran Gallery, and the Whyte Gallery. Her work has been featured in collections including the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Phillips Collection. Beyond her own practice, she was a dedicated art instructor. She taught at several institutions, including the Phillips Art School, the Washington Workshop Art Center, and the YMCA of Washington, D.C., and she also provided instruction at Hood College and American University.