She limited this series of compositions to two formats.the single patch of colour such as this which at first glance seems still and calm, its colours languid, but Ruth is playing with movement here. With her knowledge of colour and the power to make it vibrate and sing, she painstaking builds up the composition, creating in the lighter area a luminosity, which has a presence that shimmers and breathes, and has spirit, a presence that is alive.
She had never been a Sunday afternoon painter, her painting was a vocation she was drawn to spiritually, which both drained her and gave her life. She was lost without it, but lost within it. The amount of sheer mental effort Ruth put into these abstract works was more than she had though herself capable. Hiding away in her bedroom with her colours, she worked on them tirelessly for month after month, the way she had always worked, meticulously building up and scraping back, then building up some more, until she was satisfied.
Blues
Oil pastel & possibly gouache on paper
25 x 25.5 cm
Ref: DSC_0232.JPG