Biography

Vera Gates is a contemporary artist working in the mediums of oil, wax and found objects. Her current body of work explores themes of courage and transformation, through symbolic abstraction. Her iconography includes wings and words, architectural forms, full moons and branching trees.

She has studied painting with Larry Robinson at the Oakdale Studio in San Francisco, since 2009. Her work is selectively shown in Arizona, California and Vermont, with many pieces held in private collections. Current and available works may be viewed, by appointment, at her working art studio and gallery in Tucson.

Vera summers in northern Vermont, on the Canadian border, and works out of an old boathouse under the watchful eye of eagles. She was raised here, on farm land that has been in her family for generations. She grew up working the land and wandering the woods, discovering abandoned buildings and the rusty remains of what would not burn. This fascination with the landscape has informed all of her work.

Vera graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, with a degree in environmental design. She worked in the field of landscape architecture, for over thirty years and was a founding partner of Arterra Landscape Architects, in San Francisco. She currently teaches design at the University of Arizona, CAPLA.

For the past three years, Vera has presided over PaperWorks, an Artist Collective in Tucson. This group fuels her creativity and provides an opportunity to write poetry, among friends.