WINSLADE, DOROTHY

Winslade was born on the Isle of Wight in England. Her father was a watercolor artist and encouraged her to explore her interest in the arts. As a young person, Winslade studied art in London as well as Paris. She came to the United States in 1924 and began to seriously consider herself an artist. From 1931-1935 Winslade attended the California School of Fine Art (today the San Francisco Art Institute) where she met Oswald Kurman, a well-respected landscape painter. The couple married in 1934 and lived in San Francisco until 1951 when they moved to Millbrae. Winslade loved Northern California and frequently used the city as well as the surrounding area as subject matter.

Like many artists of her time, Winslade tried her hand at a variery of modernist styles from social realism to cubism and abstraction. She was adept at many mediums, achieving success not just in paint but in difficult print mediums as well. In addition to landscapes and some commercial work, Winslade did a substantial amount of portraiture in her lifetime. During WWII she worked for the U.S.O. and sketched soldiers while they were home on leave. She also served in the U.S. Navy as a mechanical draftsperson.

Northern Landscape illustrates less of Winslade's knowledge of modernism than an embrace of the attitude and approach of America's Regionalist painters. The undulating hills, the emphasis on rural life and the three dimensional realistic perspective are all qualities endorsed by this group of artists who were trying to establish a new, non-abstract approach for American artists.

Winslade exhibited extensively in the Bay Area in the late thirties and throughout the 1940s as a member of the San Francisco Art Association and the San Francisco Society of Women Artists. In 1932 and again in 1934 she was included in exhibitions at the Oakland Museum. In 1940 Winslade's paintings were included in the Golden Gate International Exposition.

After her death and when abstraction became the vogue, Winslade was forgotten. Her works were rediscovered and exhibited again in the 1980s after an art history student who had been hired to clean out the Winslade/Kurman home recognized the quality of the paintings and rescued them from the dump. Today her work is included in the collection of the Oakland Museum of Art and the San Bruno Public Library.