Gael Stack


Gael Stack is a Texas painter. She lives in Houston and has work in the permanent collections of several museums. Stack has worked as a professor at the University of Houston, serving as the art school's director in 2004 and 2005.

Biography

Stack was born in Chicago, Illinois and attended Catholic school. In 1970, she received a BFA from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and in 1972, an MFA from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. Stack moved to Houston in 1973.
Stack was honored with the Moores Professorship in 1999 and served as the Director of the University of Houston's school of art from 2004 to 2005.

Work

She was a single mother raising two sons and the feminist movement resonated with her, influencing her "to have her art reflect her reality." However, critic Alison de Lima Greene emphasizes that her art is not just autobiographical, but it is also very literary, borrowing motifs from other paintings and stories. Stack is interested in exploring "language and its limits" and epicting moments in human life through her art.
Her work is collected by the Beaux Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the Dallas Museum of Art, the San Antonio Museum of Art, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Blanton Museum of Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.