Blues, an oil on canvas painted in 1986, belies the decade in which it was created – and sold over the weekend of March 18, for a record price of $28,320.

Maud Gatewood has a body of work ranging from complete abstraction in the 60’s through landscape, to flattened pattern and portraiture in the 80’s and 90’s. She found humor in the trends on follies around her. Born in rural North Carolina and the daughter of a sheriff, she had her feet firmly planted on the ground. Her paintings combine that vantage point with tremendous talent and training to create social commentary.

Gatewood was born in 1934, received her undergraduate degree from Woman’s College of North Carolina (Now UNC Greensboro) and in 1963 she won a Fulbright Scholarship to study art in Austria, under renowned painter Oskar Kokoschka. Having painted, taught and supported her local community, she died in North Carolina in 2004. Her works have been exhibited extensively and hang in museum collections across the country.

The 1986 acrylic on canvas was consigned from a Private North Carolina Collection and measured in at 40 x 36 inches.