Gale W. Stockwell

Gale Stockwell was a student at the Kansas City Art Institute in the 1920s. He was a watercolor painter who spent his career in the Kansas City area. He participated in many exhibitions, including the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition, the Country Club Plaza Art Fair and the Missouri State Fair. He won multiple awards, including a gold medal in oil painting in 1928 and a bronze medal for watercolor in 1930, both at the Midwestern Artists' Exhibition. He also won multiple awards in the 1950s in the Greater Kansas City Art Association exhibitions.

Stockwell was hired by the Public Works of Art Project in 1933. This was a government program employing artists during the Great Depression. His painting Parkville, Main Street from that time is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. He lost track of it until he saw it published on a jigsaw puzzle in 1971. His inquiry to the Smithsonian received the reply that the "painting became part of the National Collection of Fine Arts in 1964 when it was transferred from the Department of Labor along with a large group of Public Works of Art paintings." It was said to have hung in the White House in the Nixon administration. (Kansas City Star, Dec. 19, 1971).

Stockwell held at least one solo exhibition (possibly in 1972). In the exhibition brochure, he wrote "The country in and about Kansas City is very inspiring to me because it is so varied in subject matter and in atmospheric effects. There are many things to paint and many ways to paint them. One may travel the same road often, and, with the shifting of the sun, or the coming storm, find a new aspect of the same subject. In these watercolors I have attempted to catch the mood of the moment and register it quickly, directly, and personally. I hope you will enjoy seeing them as much as I enjoyed doing them."

Stockwell spent his professional career in advertising, then retired in 1954 to spend more time painting. He died in Colorado Springs in 1983.