Gayle Gilford was born in Washington, DC and grew up in North Salem New York, where as a teenager she studied art with Daniel Greene. Her family wintered at the historic Belleview Biltmore Hotel near Clearwater, Florida, where she took private art lessons. She later studied at the Lunquist Studio in Lauderdale By the Sea and Anne Tutt Studio Gallery in Macon Georgia.
With a BA degree in Education from the University of South Carolina, Gayle taught First Grade in Florida while working on her Masters degree. Later she became an extra casting director with Universal Studios and appeared in several movies. Gayle has taught landscape painting classes in community and senior citizens centers and at Michael’s stores. She is certified to teach Donna Dewberry’s One Stroke decorative painting, and has represented Plaid Enterprises teaching many of these classes.
Gayle ran her own art gallery/gift shop in Nashville, TN for five years while working on TV shows and movies and expanding her art career.
Gayle has won well over one hundred awards for her art, including; Award of Merit in the 2002 Jane Law International Juried Miniature Art Exhibit, Surf City, NJ; First Place in Still Life and Honorable Mention in Animals in the 1997 Georgia Miniature Art Society International Show; First Place in “Vanishing Florida” in the 1996 International Exhibition of the Miniature Art Society of Florida; First Place in painting animals in the Twenty-Third Annual International Exhibition of the Miniature Art Society of New Jersey; First Place in ivory/ivorine in 1995 and Honorable Mention in 2003 in the international juried exhibitions of the Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers Society of Washington, DC; Judge’s Choice in the Tenth Annual International Exhibition of the Georgia Miniature Arts Society; Third in Show in the St. Simons Miniature Competition 1994; Best of Show in the Annual Tennessee Art League Miniature Show in 1988 and 1996; First Place in the Charleston area recycling art competition 2005 and in 2009; HM in 2006; HM Charleston Artist Guild Signature Show 2008, and many other awards in juried competitions.
Two of Gayle’s miniatures won first place awards in the Art ’95 Competition in the Soho area of New York City in July 1995. Two of her works were included in the first Exhibition of the World Federation of Miniaturists in Westminster Gallery, London, England, in November, 1995, and two paintings were included in the WFM show in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC, where she demonstrated miniature painting in June 2004.
Gayle is a member of the Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers Society of Washington, DC, World Federation of Miniaturists, Miniature Art Society of Florida, Charleston Artist Guild, Beaufort Art Association, Daughters of the American Revolution and the University of South Carolina Alumni Association and Alumni Band.
Gayle specializes in painting miniatures, though she does paint larger paintings for gallery exhibitions. Gayle’s subjects range from realistic landscapes, lighthouses on ivory, wildlife and pets, to historic buildings, courtyards and fountains in the French Quarter in Charleston, SC and old barns and farms. She enjoys painting animals and the natural beauty of the Carolina Low Country and “Old” Florida. Her paintings are all created from her own on location photographs and sketches.
Gayle is represented by the Charleston Artist Guild Gallery, 160 East Bay Street, Accent Framing and Gallery on Ben Sawyer Blvd., Mt. Pleasant, SC., Island Time Beach Shop on Isle of Palms, Gallery By the Sea on Tybee Island, GA. and the Beaufort Art Association Gallery, 1001 Bay Street, Beaufort, SC.
