Roxanne Gribbin
Reno Portrait and Pastel Painter · Gallery Owner · Artists' Co-op, Mill Street · 1980s
On the back of our portrait of a fair haired woman, high on the raw canvas, a name is written in pencil: Roxanne Gribbin. When we first catalogued the painting we searched the standard indexes of American artists and the auction databases, found no painter of that name, and concluded the name most likely belonged to the sitter. The Reno newspapers of the 1980s tell a different story. They record a Roxanne Gribbin, sometimes printed Gribben, who painted portraits and animals, worked in oil and pastel, ran her own gallery on South Virginia Street, won first prizes for portraiture and for pastels, joined the Artists' Co-op on Mill Street and took commissions for portraits. The name on the back of our canvas is, we now believe, the painter's own.
A Demonstration of Animal Painting, 1980
She first appears in January 1980, in the Nevada State Journal's report of the Nevada Artists Association newsletter. The Reno chapter was to meet at the Reno Recreation Center at Riverside and Vine on 10 January, and Roxanne Gribbin would give a demonstration of animal painting. She was also taking the reservations for a two-day workshop on painting animals with Ancey Chesebrough of Los Altos, California. A painter trusted to demonstrate technique to her own chapter was not a beginner.
Innovation Arts, 1583 South Virginia
Six months later she had a gallery of her own. On 6 June 1980 the Reno Evening Gazette's round-up of additions to Reno's visual arts scene announced that Innovation Arts, a new gallery at 1583 South Virginia Street, would open that Saturday at noon with a champagne reception and a drawing for an original painting. Its owner, Roxanne Gribben, said the new space would display forty paintings by local artists, and that the first featured artist would be the oil painter Jessica Clark. The same column reported the opening of a gallery for the nationally known Edna Hibel on Lakeside Drive; Roxanne Gribbin was opening hers in the same week.
First Prize for Portraits, 1982
On 1 and 2 May 1982 the Pizen Palettes club held the annual Nevada Artists Association Spring Art Show in the National Guard Armory at Yerington. The Mason Valley News printed the judging, by James Lawrence of Gardnerville, category by category, and under Portrait Awards the first prize went to Roxanne Gribben. The other prizewinners that weekend included Mary Chadwell, a founder of the Reno co-op, and the watercolourist Lane Sharman. Six weeks later, in June 1982, she showed again on the sidewalks of Reno's Village Center at California Avenue and Booth Street, one of four Reno artists in a sidewalk art show with Kathy McKenzie, Mahree Roberts and Lane Sherman.
The Artists' Co-op and Portrait Commissions
By the end of 1983 she had been elected to the Artists' Co-op Gallery at 627 Mill Street, the volunteer-run gallery founded in 1966 in an old French laundry. Writing on Christmas Day 1983, the Reno arts columnist Velda Morby, herself a co-op founder, reported that the pastels of the gallery's two newest members, Roxanne Gribben and Ruth Cantrell, were proving popular, and added that Roxanne takes commissions for portraits. The same column noted that Marge Means had for many years run a Wednesday portrait workshop at the Reno Community Center, which tells us how lively portrait painting from the model was in Reno in those years.
Her commissions reached print. On 28 April 1985 the Reno Gazette-Journal illustrated an arts column with a portrait of a man captioned simply Lawlor, credited as Roxanne Gribben's portrait.
Best in Pastels at the State Fair, 1986
In August 1986 the Nevada Arts Association announced its Reno chapter winners at the Nevada State Fair art show, chosen from 254 entries. First place in pastels went to Roxanne Gribben. In February 1988 she was among the contributors to a University of Nevada, Reno benefit auction, and in May 1989 her pastels were the featured exhibition at the Nevada Gallery in the lobby of the Reno Gazette-Journal building, shown with the work of Margot Seymour Schulze of Auburn, California.
The Painting
Our portrait is a head and shoulders study of a fair haired woman turned three quarters to the viewer, her hair swept up and back in a full soft wave, a pale scarf gathered at her throat. She looks out and a little past us, composed and slightly guarded. It was painted wet into wet in a single sitting over a warm toned ground that is left showing through most of the canvas. The background is barely touched and the shoulders are a few broad sweeps; all the effort went into the face. The palette is held to ochre, cream and raw canvas, with three notes of colour let in on purpose: green in the brow and the shadow of the eye, pink on the cheek and red on the lower lip.
That is exactly the kind of picture a working portrait painter makes from life, in a session with the model in the room, and it fits a painter whose reputation in Reno was built on portraits and on pastel, a medium that rewards the same economy of means.
Why Roxanne Gribbin Matters
Gribbin belonged to the generation that kept Reno's art life running in the 1980s: painters who demonstrated for their chapter, opened small galleries, staffed the co-op, entered the fair and painted their neighbours to order. None of them made the national indexes, and that is why their work loses its names so easily. Our portrait kept its name in pencil on the back, and the newspapers have now given that name a career.
A Life in the Record
Gives a demonstration of animal painting to the Reno chapter of the Nevada Artists Association and takes reservations for an animal painting workshop.
Opens Innovation Arts, her own gallery at 1583 South Virginia Street, Reno, showing forty paintings by local artists.
First prize for portraits at the Nevada Artists Association Spring Art Show, Yerington.
One of four Reno artists in the Village Center Sidewalk Art Show, with Mahree Roberts.
Newest member of the Artists' Co-op Gallery, 627 Mill Street; her pastels sell well and she takes portrait commissions.
Her portrait of a man named Lawlor is reproduced in the Reno Gazette-Journal.
First place in pastels at the Nevada State Fair art show, Reno chapter, out of 254 entries.
Featured exhibition of her pastels at the Nevada Gallery, Reno Gazette-Journal building.
We first read the pencilled name as the sitter's. The Reno papers show Roxanne Gribbin was a portrait painter with her own gallery, first prize for portraits in 1982 and for pastels at the State Fair in 1986, who took commissions from the Mill Street co-op. The quick, confident face on this canvas looks very much like her trade.Viridian Eclection, Reno
Inquire About Available Works
If you knew Roxanne Gribbin, sat for her, or own a portrait or pastel by her, especially a signed one, we would like to hear from you. One signed work would let us compare her hand directly with the name on our canvas.
