Susan Ross (artist)

Susan Andrina Ross CM (3 June 1915 – 5 January 2006), was a Canadian painter, printmaker, and illustrator from Port Arthur, Ontario who is best known for her portraits of Native and Inuit peoples as well as Arctic landscapes.

Ross showed an interest in drawing at a very young age and was encouraged by her mother to take art lessons.

An important and early influence in her life was her uncle, the documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty, who is best known for his film Nanook of the North.

Ross continued her love of portraiture, painting friends and neighbors' children but eventually began to focus her efforts and inspiration on First Nations people after meeting an Ojibwa woman named Emily and seeing First Nations wild-rice harvesters at Whitefish Lake.

Soon after the Second World War, Ross had met Sheila Burnford[6] the author of The Incredible Journey, an animal saga that Walt Disney adapted for the cinema.

She then began producing high quality etchings and, drawing on the rich array of sketches obtained on her various trips, she was able to reflect and structure many of these images more rigorously in the studio.

Being the "right person at the right place in a very dramatic time in Canadian history",[7] she was able to capture and document a period of rapid change in many northern communities.