10/08/2026
This year’s Housing Support Services Alliance silent auction has a strong art focus, and we’ll be highlighting pieces all the way up until the auction closes to catch your attention. Remember — the auction is online only, so you don’t have to attend our November 7th event to participate (though we’d love to see you there).
Our first featured artist is Bob Moss — not Bob Ross… Bob Moss. Housing friends, think back to those legendary Boston Capital parties at the June NCSHA conferences. That Bob Moss. In addition to being a giant in affordable housing and an all around great guy, he’s an incredibly talented artist. Who knew!
We’re lucky enough to have two of his paintings in this year’s auction. Take a look! https://www.32auctions.com/.../206182/auction_items/7165535
https://www.32auctions.com/.../206182/auction_items/7182643
In addition to his art, Bob shared some of his story:
Bob Moss: His History of Painting
Bob’s art has always been inspired using color and the Impressionism genre, and the idea that images should not be photographic.
Bob was born in Cadillac, Michigan, in 1956, to Mary and Ed Moss. Ed was a high school teacher and coach, while Mary was a creative stay-at-home mother with talents in sewing, arts, and crafts.
Bob’s grandfather, Carl Paulson, ran the local newspaper, the Cadillac Evening News, and often brought home extra blank paper. With those materials—and encouragement from his grandmother Gladys, who taught elementary school art—Bob began drawing in pencil at age six or seven and soon moved on to watercolor and acrylic painting.
His family later moved from Cadillac to Belding, Michigan, where both of his parents became schoolteachers. Belding was a dreary mill town in central Michigan, about 25 miles east of Grand Rapids. Encouraged by his high school art teacher, Bob continued studying art after graduation and enrolled at St. Thomas Aquinas College as an art major. There, he studied figure drawing from live models and color theory and painted his first—and only—self-portrait.
The following year, Bob enrolled at Western Michigan University to continue his art studies, including art history. Soon after, his path changed when tragedy struck: his mother, Mary, and grandmother, Gladys, were killed in a car accident caused by a drunk driver. Bob had to leave college to take care of his father who had suffered a mental breakdown, and the years between 1977 to 1984 were considered his lost years.
In 1985, Bob, his wife Julie, and their three children moved from Michigan to Maine, where Bob worked for an affordable housing developer. During his many years in the field, including roles with Boston Capital and Cohn Reznick, he continued painting in his spare time.
The 2020 pandemic revived Bob’s painting practice, encouraged by the quiet of the shutdown and his new stage as an empty nester. He now lives in Yarmouth, Maine, with his wife, Julie, and their dog, Tugboat. Through his company MG Housing Strategies, he continues to advocate for housing resources on the federal level in Wahington DC. He paints through the long winters and spends the short summers fly fishing. Although he has never sold a painting himself, he donates his work to individuals and organizations that sell them and contribute the proceeds to food banks across the country. Bob can be reached at [email protected] See less
May be art
