Bernice Cross

Bernice Cross (1912–1996) was an American artist and art instructor born in Iowa City, Iowa, who was based in Washington, D.C. for most of her professional career. In her late teens Cross enrolled at the Wilmington Academy in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1949 she showed at the Corcoran, Phillips, and Barnett Aden Galleries in Washington, at the Chequire House gallery in Alexandria, Virginia, and in both solo and group exhibitions at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York.

In 1936 a critic praised the subtlety of color in her paintings of this period, the skill she showed in organizing elements, and, in general, her sure touch. The writer appreciated the individual quality with which she invested the figures in her paintings and called attention to the "fantastic world of gay and colorful legend" that they invoked.

Although she did not continue to paint on velvet, Cross's work in the 1940s continued to show an adventurous experimentation with technique. This mainly manifested in an interest in surface texture. She would leave parts of a surface unpainted to show the bare canvas, use brush and knife to build up layers of pigment and add mica or ordinary sand to her paintings. At the end of the decade, a critic noted the appearance of dark works having a ghostly quality and a mannerist treatment of figures giving them an archaic simplicity. They had no children and divorced in the 1950s.

Later life and work

In 1950 and for the remainder of her productive life Cross continued to exhibit at the Whyte, Bader, and Barnett Aden galleries in Washington, D.C. In 1951 she had a solo show at the Bertha Schaefer Gallery in New York. In the late 1950s she participated in an innovative scheme called the Art Rental Gallery which allowed people to rent works with an option to buy.