Gina Gilmour’s canvases are large, colorful, and representational, but not always straightforward in meaning. For her, “Art making has always been my way of processing experience—to celebrate, to mourn, to rail against the intolerable, and to navigate the mysterious.”
Gilmour was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, and as a child she made things in the woods, built forts, and rescued injured animals. She also made clay figurines which she continued to craft later in her career. For her, “sculpture is trial and error. Painting teaches you about finding what you need next.” Gilmour earned her Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, a private liberal arts college in Bronxville, New York. From 1976 to 1980, she held an artist-in-residency position with the North Carolina Arts and Science Council in Charlotte. She was a fellow in such locations as: the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Amherst, (1981); the MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, New Hampshire (1975 and 1980); the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony, Costa Rica (2003). In 1988 she was a visiting artist at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
In 1999 Gilmour was artist-in-residence at William Steeple Davis Foundation in Orient, New York, on the north shore of Long Island, an experience that led her to convert a 1920s-era motel in nearby Mattituck into her home and studio. As a result, she transformed her work: “… when I was needing to get out of New York City and wanting to get back to nature, to be near water and light. New vistas, colors, and feelings came into my work, and a spaciousness that comes from living with a wide horizon.” Much of her output has been figurative, and frequently includes birds or horses, and water imagery. Often ambiguous, the work verges on surreal.
As a North Carolinian, in 1990 Gilmour produced a series of eight posters focused on long-time Senator Jesse Helms. Entitled Jesus Would Forgive Jesse Helms—He Wouldn’t Vote for Him, they are a clear reference to Helms’ positions on AIDS, immigration, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Occasionally Gilmour has addressed other fraught topics such as the relationship of power and race in the contemporary South and moments of loss and tragedy.