Gayle Garner Roski

A native of Los Angeles, Gayle Garner Roski studied fine arts at the University of Southern California. Her vibrant watercolors have been exhibited extensively in museums and galleries from Southern California to Scotland. Roski bridges her fine art career with her civic dedication. She is Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for the City of Los Angeles and has headed public art projects throughout the city, including the L.A. Angel project and the Los Angeles Cathedral. She also serves on the executive board of the California Art Club.

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A plein-air watercolorist and avid world traveler, Roski has explored some of the most remote parts of the globe, always with paints and sketchbook in hand. She dives the uncharted waters off New Guinea and has climbed to the summit of Mr. Kilimanjaro.
“One of the great joys of travel is seeing how creativity is expressed throughout the world; connecting to the arts and artisans of different cultures is a profound inspiration.” For this year’s Masters of the American West Fine Art Exhibition and Sale, she says, “I wanted to create good dreams of hearth and home, of love and security, of peace and joy. Thus the Native American legend of The Dream Catcher.”

Roski has created several series of paintings around materials she has collected on her travels. In her most recent exhibitions, she has chosen to incorporate her inspiration in an evocative fashion, mounting in each frame an object represented in the painting—a Chinese calligraphy brush or a piece of Italian pottery, for example.

In 2009 Roski had a one-woman show, called Travel Treasures, at Edenhurst Gallery, Palm Desert, California, and illustrated her first children’s book, Ma Ling in China City, written by Icy Smith, which won the Independent Publishers Book Award.