Ross returned to Port Arthur to begin a family and also to continue with her art work. Painting in the 1940s and 1950s at Lake Superior,
Rossport, and
Whitefish lake, Ross strove to be taken seriously as an artist. She signed her work "S.A. Ross" or "SARoss" because "women did not have any clout". Ross was active in the Port Arthur Art Club which held exhibitions and juried shows at the local library, there being no public art gallery there at the time. From 1951 to 1952, Ross taught art at
Hillcrest High School. the author of
The Incredible Journey, an animal saga that
Walt Disney adapted for the cinema. Ross and Burnford would subsequently travel extensively together.
Norval Morrisseau invited Ross to
Gull Bay and Armstrong to paint while he collected legends and songs and then subsequently to
Big Trout Lake and finally to Sandy Lake. It was in Sandy Lake that Ross met Carl Ray and painted his portrait among many others. Ross and Morrisseau remained friends for many years although their friendship eventually became strained by Morrisseau's legendary drinking binges - a Morrisseau sketch entitled "Susan" depicting their friendship is held in the collection of the
National Gallery of Canada. Ross returned to Big Trout Lake in 1963–1965 and 1975, to Sandy lake in 1965–1967 and to
Little Grand Rapids Manitoba in 1967–1970. Ross then turned her sights to venues even farther north, traveling with Sheila Burnford to Pond Inlet,
Baffin Island in 1970–1971, to Coppermine, Northwest Territories in 1972, 1974, 1976–1978, 1983, to Hollman Island, Northwest Territories in 1972, 1976 and to Cape Dorset, Baffin Island in 1973, to Pangnirtung, Baffin Island in 1980, and to Rae-Edzo, Northwest Territories and Kasechewan, Ontario in 1982–1983. On these trips Ross made many friends. Ross also encountered many challenges as would be expected in such northern and unforgiving vistas. For example, once returning to Cape Dorset from a remote island with a small group, the motor on the small boat they were traveling in failed - she and her group drifted four hours, a sail was deployed to no avail and finally gunshots were fired to elicit help from a nearby settlement - the group was finally towed to safety. Ross took an etching workshop with
Jo Manning in 1967 and acquired a printing press in 1969. 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", she was able to capture and document a period of rapid change in many northern communities. In many of these images "the human toll is recorded in the faces of individuals and in the cumulative details of daily existence". ==Solo exhibitions==