“ Ruth has an innate sense of how to create balance of colour or of atmosphere… she has the enviable ability to both create a sense of place and a satisfying collection of brush strokes which work hand in hand.”
Ruth Bateman (b. 1982 Weymouth, UK) is an emerging contemporary artist working in north Devon and Cornwall whose practice pursues and questions the concept of the sublime and sense of place. Landscape and connectivity play an important role in her work as much as her concerns around climate awareness and environmental preservation.
Ruth explores the landscape with her body: rock climbing, mountaineering, and cycling. This bodily experience of landscape is reflected in the kinetic way Ruth creates her paintings. Ruth allows herself to be entirely instinctive with paint; mark making and choices of colour are initially intuitive and spontaneous, being tamed and refined as the painting progresses. Ruth uses conventional materials such as acrylics, oil, inks on canvas, along with non-conventional materials such as tea, mud, bedsheets and other found surfaces.
Ruth’s paintings are a conflation of both internal and external landscape, her work acts as an expression and celebration of difference, but also a statement of the tension between man and the environment. Being neurodivergent, Ruth sees art as another language which enables us to enter a world where there are no barriers. She utilises the communicative powers of visual expression to problem solve, ask questions, explore, give voice and empower.
Please see instagram @RUTHBATEMANARTIST for current and developing work.