Featured Artist Ruth Armitage

Artist Ruth Armitage paints abstracts focused on personal memories. Filled with color, line and movement, they portray her sense of nostalgia and moving on. Learn more by viewing her website.

 

 

What happens when you must say goodbye to the family farm? The memories and emotions of this private letting go are the subject of my recent work. My abstract paintings are an attempt to capture those feelings and to portray my own unique perceptions of the land, the house, its history and its meaning in my life.

 

 

My childhood and early adult years were rich with visual beauty. My mother created a stunning environment on a farmer’s budget. Her grit and determination, along with her innate style provided a lush backdrop for so many memories.

 

 

But the subject goes beyond storytelling and nostalgia. Painting for me has become a kind of salve for loss. My sense of the place amounts to more than the soil, the landscape, the house or the people. It is some magical concoction of all of them, wrapped in history, secrecy and love.

 

 

In the act of painting, I use colors, textures, patterns, lines and shapes that symbolize these thoughts and emotions. My goal is to create something beautiful out of the experience. I want to simultaneously preserve and escape from the past by experiencing the release of creation.

 

 

I wrap myself in a cocoon of color, a blanket of texture, an embrace of shape. The immersion in the luscious layers and physical presence of the work brings me out of the past, combining it with the present.

 

 

I begin with a title, a feeling or a specific memory. This loosely held idea guides each decision. Will the work be large or small? Will I paint in watercolor, acrylic or oil? Will it be mostly warm or cool?

 

 

At this stage I must be vulnerable to emotion and honest in my focus. Often a work demands more than one rendition to arrive at its deepest meaning. I am not simply wandering; rather, I’m focused in my exploration, keeping a destination in mind.

 

 

Those first choices guide each subsequent decision as I move intuitively through the process. Although the subject matter may not be evident to viewers; for me each shape, gesture or color symbolizes a specific facet of my internal narrative.

 

 

My favorite titles are those with layers of meaning—for instance, “Beneath the Surface,” references the surface of the soil, the surface of the memory and the surface of my personal appearance.

 

 

The title of another work, “Artifact,” refers to both Native American artifacts found on the farm, and items left behind for the new owners. They will uncover my family’s imprints on the house, the land and on history.

Artist Ruth Armitage invites you to follow her on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.

 

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