Gael Stack (born 1941) is a Texas painter. She lives in

Houston Houston (; ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in Texas, the Southern United States#Major cities, most populous city in the Southern United States, the List of United States cities by population, fourth-most pop ...

and has work in the permanent collections of several museums. Stack has worked as a professor at the

University of Houston The University of Houston (UH) is a Public university, public research university in Houston, Texas. Founded in 1927, UH is a member of the University of Houston System and the List of universities in Texas by enrollment, university in Texas ...

, serving as the art school's director in 2004 and 2005.

Biography

Stack was born in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

and attended Catholic school. In 1970, she received a BFA from the

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...

and in 1972, an MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Stack moved to

in 1973. She first started earning income as a secretary in Houston. Stack was honored with the Moores Professorship in 1999 and served as the Director of the University of Houston's school of art from 2004 to 2005.

Work

Gael Stack's work is unique and is sometimes misunderstood. She places letter-like figures onto dark backgrounds. She creates a relationship between the two dimensions. Her art is dark, yet many people see the layers behind them. She was a single mother raising two sons and the feminist movement resonated with her, influencing her "to have her art reflect her reality." However, critic Alison de Lima Greene emphasizes that her art is not just

autobiographical An autobiography, sometimes informally called an autobio, is a self-written account of one's own life. It is a form of biography. Definition The word "autobiography" was first used deprecatingly by William Taylor in 1797 in the English p ...

, but it is also very literary, borrowing motifs from other paintings and stories. Stack is interested in exploring "language and its limits" and depicting moments in human life through her art. People confused her work for scribbles on a dark background, however, these figures represented parts of her life. She refuses to talk about her work in detail and allows people to interpret and remember them differently. Her work is collected by the Beaux Art Museum, the

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), is an art museum located in the Houston Museum District of Houston, Texas. With the recent completion of an eight-year campus redevelopment project, including the opening of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Bui ...

, the

Dallas Museum of Art The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the Art ...

, the

San Antonio Museum of Art The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) is an art museum in Downtown San Antonio, Texas, USA. The museum spans 5,000 years of global culture. The museum is housed in the historic former Lone Star Brewery (1886) on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio ...

, the

El Paso Museum of Art Founded in 1959, The El Paso Museum of Art (EPMA) is located in downtown El Paso, Texas. First accredited in 1972, it is the only accredited art museum within a 250-mile radius and serves approximately 100,000 visitors per year. A new building ...

, the

Blanton Museum of Art The Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (often referred to as the Blanton or the BMA) at the University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest university art museums in the U.S. with 189,340 square feet devoted to temporary exhibitions, permanent coll ...

and the

Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (or MCASD), in San Diego, California, US, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present. Mission The stated mission of ...

References

External links

Faculty page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stack, Gael 1941 births University of Houston faculty University of Illinois College of Fine and Applied Arts alumni Southern Illinois University Carbondale alumni American women artists American feminists Living people American women academics 21st-century American women