Betty Gross creates non narrative visual settings for us in her exhibition "Small Paintings"; she creates layers of color and atmosphere within which we are free to meander. She describes, "Having worked directly from life and nature for many years in many different media, I am more interested in trying to distill the sights and scenes and colors and shapes of what I see into more abstract terms. I'm interested in change, in abandonment, in retaining the freshness of the process. It's totally process after awhile. I'll paint something over and over again untill it satisfies me. The challenge is getting it right.” 

"In these works, visual memories and emotions are taken over by the act of painting itself to create a final image. Playing one color aginst another, one shape against another, becomes more important than the original inspiration. I don't paint the daffodils, even though it may be spring." 

Betty Gross works in the medium of Monotype on Japanese papers and in acrylic paint on a heavier paper called Stonehenge. She has been painting and studying the visual arts since she was 14; she has seriously pursued sculpture, life drawing, monotype and other media for over 30 years, studying with King Coffin at the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Mass., as well as more recently, with Paul Stopforth and Roselynn Karol Ablow. Before this, she attended the University of Richmond, Virgina and the Art Students' League, in New York City. Ms. Gross has been coming to Martha's Vineyard for 42 years. It was 15 years ago that she built her studio in Gay Head. As well as exhibiting in a one person show at this gallery in 1992, Ms. Gross has shown her work in New Art Center, Newton, Mass.; at the Newton Public Library; at the Jewish Community Center, Newton, Mass. and at the Gay Head Gallery.