Alice Taylor Gafford (August 15, 1886 – October 27, 1981) was an American nurse, teacher, and artist, based in Los Angeles.

Early life and education

Alice Taylor was born in

Tecumseh, Kansas Tecumseh is an unincorporated community in Shawnee County, Kansas, United States, and situated along the Kansas River. As of the 2020 census, the population of the community and nearby areas was 696. The community and township are both named f ...

, one of ten children. Her parents were Benjamin and Alice Armstead Taylor.

Career

Gafford was a nurse for twenty-five years before beginning her career in art. Notable from her first career is a stint with the

American Red Cross The American Red Cross (ARC), also known as the American National Red Cross, is a non-profit humanitarian organization that provides emergency assistance, disaster relief, and disaster preparedness education in the United States. It is the desi ...

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...

(1915–16), and her work with

Daniel Hale Williams Daniel Hale Williams (January 18, 1856 – August 4, 1931) was an African-American surgeon, who in 1893 performed what is referred to as "the first successful heart surgery". It was performed at Chicago's Provident Hospital, which he founded in ...

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. She moved to Los Angeles in 1922. She trained at Otis Art Institute (now called

Otis College of Art and Design Otis College of Art and Design is a private art and design school in Los Angeles, California. Established in 1918, it was the city's first independent professional school of art. The main campus is located in the former IBM Aerospace headquarte ...

) and earned a teaching certificate at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

in 1951, when she was sixty-five years old, and taught art in an adult education program. She was active in the Val Verde community, teaching and holding art exhibitions, and chairing the Val Verde Women's Cultural Society. Her works, mostly still life or landscape scenes, were exhibited often in her later years. At 81, she accepted a commission to paint portraits of twelve notable African Americans, for display at the Family Savings and Loan Association offices in Los Angeles. Gafford was involved in founding the Los Angeles Negro Art Association in 1937, and the Eleven Associated Artists gallery (later Art West Association) in downtown Los Angeles. The short lived Los Angeles artists co-op included African American contemporaries

Beulah Woodard Beulah Ecton Woodard (November 11, 1895 – July 13, 1955) was an African-American sculptor and painter based in California. Woodard was the first African American artist to have a solo exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science and ...

William Pajaud William Etienne "Bill" Pajaud (August 3, 1925 – June 16, 2015) was an African-American artist, primarily working in watercolor, known for his paintings exploring themes of jazz. He was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, and died in Los Angeles, Cal ...

and

Chinese American Chinese Americans are Americans of Han Chinese ancestry. Chinese Americans constitute a subgroup of East Asian Americans which also constitute a subgroup of Asian Americans. Many Chinese Americans along with their ancestors trace lineage from ...

artist

Tyrus Wong Tyrus Wong (October 25, 1910 – December 30, 2016) was a Chinese-born American artist. He was a painter, animator, calligrapher, muralist, ceramicist, lithographer and kite maker, as well as a set designer and storyboard artist. One of the mos ...

. She was called "the dean of black artists in Los Angeles" in recognition of her community leadership. Her oil paintings were part of a Negro History Week exhibit at

Doheny Library The Edward L. Doheny Jr. Memorial Library is a library located in the center of campus at the University of Southern California (USC). History After the shooting of his son, the Irish American oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny donated $1.1 milli ...

in 1953.

Personal life

Alice Taylor married Louis Sherman Gafford, a

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

veteran, in 1928. She was widowed in 1959, and stopped painting in 1975, after developing

cataracts A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens of the eye that leads to a decrease in vision. Cataracts often develop slowly and can affect one or both eyes. Symptoms may include faded colors, blurry or double vision, halos around light, trouble w ...

. Alice Taylor Gafford died in 1981, age 95, and her remains were buried at

Los Angeles National Cemetery The Los Angeles National Cemetery is a United States National Cemetery in the Sawtelle unincorporated community of the West Los Angeles neighborhood in Los Angeles County, California. Geography The entrance to the cemetery is located at 950 Sou ...

Legacy

Gafford was known for her role in founding and developing a number of art groups in southern California, including the annual Val Verde art show, which was later named in her honor. She is remembered as an early African-American woman artist in Los Angeles, and as an artist who became especially productive at an advanced age. She is represented by paintings in the collections at

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a private, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity" and accredited by the Middle States Commissi ...

, the

Long Beach Museum of Art The Long Beach Museum of Art is a museum located on Ocean Boulevard in the Bluff Park neighborhood of Long Beach, California, United States. The museum's permanent collection includes over 4,000 paintings, drawings, sculptures, works on paper, a ...

, and the

Bowers Museum The Bowers Museum is an art museum located in Santa Ana, California. The museum's permanent collection includes more than 100,000 objects, and features notable strengths in the areas of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, Native American art, the art of A ...

, among other institutions. Ora Williams
''American Black Women in the Arts and Sciences: A Bibliographic Survey'' (Rowman & Littlefield 1994): 313-314.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gafford, Alice Taylor American landscape painters American nurses American women nurses American art educators Painters from Los Angeles 1886 births 1981 deaths African-American women artists African-American history in Los Angeles Educators from Greater Los Angeles People from Santa Clarita, California People from Shawnee County, Kansas Burials at Los Angeles National Cemetery 20th-century American educators 20th-century American painters 20th-century American women painters 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American painters African-American nurses