The Sweetest Thing
Ayana Ross is a visual artist whose work combines traditional oil painting methods, using figurative realism, with the elaborate treatment of patterns and decorative design as a visual language to evoke nostalgia, elevate her subjects, and provide greater context into her work.
Often autobiographical in nature, Ross' paintings employ layered narratives from past and present to examine social issues, such as identity, race, equity and a general assessment of our value systems, while aiming to illuminate the greater lesson we can learn from everyday people and moments.
Ross holds a Master of Arts degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design (2021) and a Master of Arts degree in Liberal Arts from University of North Carolina-Greensboro (2014). She has been recognized as the 2021 winner of the Bennett Prize, the 2022 recipient of the National Black Art Festival Award in Visual Arts, the Pittsburgh Foundation’s Eben Demarest Award in 2024, and was a Spring 2024 Mellon Arts and Practitioner Fellow through the Center of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration at Yale University.