Remembering Joanna Higgs Ross
Joanna Higgs Ross, a groundbreaking painter and the first woman to graduate from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, passed away in November 2025 at the age of 91. She left an enduring legacy as a Tennessee artist and educator whose evocative, expressionist paintings helped redefine what art could be in the state.
“She thought very deeply about most things,” said Erin Furlong, Ross’s niece and a master’s student in social work at UT. “That’s reflected in the care that she put into her art.”
Ross earned her bachelor’s degree in 1954, studying under Kermit “Buck” Ewing, the first director of the UT School of Art. After her graduation, Ross was handpicked by Ewing to join the Knoxville Seven, a group of pioneering abstract modernist artists who exhibited together throughout the state. The group included Ewing, his School of Art colleagues Walter Hollis Stevens, Richard Clark, Carl Sublett, and Phillip Nichols, and Knoxville muralist Robert Birdwell.
“Ross made significant contributions to the visual arts in East Tennessee as a painter and educator,” said Stephen Wicks, curator at the Knoxville Museum of Art. “She gained further recognition through her contributions to the Knoxville Seven during the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the group’s youngest and only female member.”
At that time, art being produced and exhibited in Tennessee and in many Southern states was dominated by realist work. Ross’s striking paintings—a fog-veiled landscape of the Great Smoky Mountains, a lone figure sitting on a bench against a rising wall of shadowy green—portrayed the region’s landscapes and people in fresh and interesting ways.
“East Tennessee was very important to her,” said Furlong, from the home she had shared with Ross in Nashville. “She had a lot of affection for the Knoxville Seven. She was always a little puzzled about why she was included in that group—of course, no one else was, after seeing her art.”
“She was a very unassuming person; she never took herself too seriously,” Furlong continued. “She was always observing and listening, and always wanted to hear what other people thought about her work.”
While exhibiting her paintings throughout Tennessee, Ross also worked as a graphic designer and scientific illustrator for the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. In 1961, she earned her Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Illinois; shortly after, she returned to her home state of Tennessee to begin teaching full time at Lambuth College in Jackson. The institution’s only art teacher, she remained there for over 20 years.
“She really loved teaching, encouraging new artists and helping them find their voice,” said Furlong. “Her students feature in some of her artwork from that time period. Some students she corresponded with for years and years after their graduation.”
Ross’s path wasn’t always easy. During a time when fewer women attended college and even fewer obtained graduate degrees and joined the workforce as professors, she stood out; her letters would occasionally remark on a man being hired over a woman for a position. But she never showed any resentment, said Furlong.
“That was who she was—she didn’t hold grudges,” Furlong continued. “She didn’t compromise who she was or what she wanted for other people.”
After she retired from teaching in 1983, Ross and her husband, Douglas A. Ross, returned to Nashville to help care for her aging parents. There, she began painting full time, often working from photos or exploring the changing landscape beyond the window of her backyard studio. In addition to her own artistic practice, she remained active in local church and art communities throughout her life.
Ross’s 60-year-old body of work was formally recognized by Tennessee in 2019, when she received the Distinguished Artist Governor’s Arts Award from the Tennessee Arts Commission, the state’s highest honor in the arts.
Despite her many accolades, Ross remained humble, moving slowly and intentionally through the world she depicted with such care and curiosity.
“She really knew who she was as a person,” said Furlong. “She lived her life exactly the way she wanted to. And that’s something I’m trying to take away from her life, too.”
Ross’s work can be seen in art collections throughout Tennessee, including the Tennessee State Museum, the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, and the Knoxville Museum of Art.