"Funk Fantasia" Painting

Rachel Ruff has worn many hats, including Emmy award-winning CNN producer, ad-agency executive, White House assistant pastry chef, author, and artist. Though she feels most at home when she's in her favorite element: painting.

At CNN, Ruff produced Emmy award winning medical documentaries and created the first-ever “World Aids Day” documentary. Ruff served as a Vice President for Porter Novelli, a worldwide advertising agency, where she used her journalistic insight and extensive CNN experience to oversee digital media and broadcast projects.

She wrote and self-published “Defriending Facebook,” a memoir on the intense pressures and addictions she fell into with social media. Her narrative details how she came dangerously close to taking her own life and how she healed herself by going offline. Ruff says, "My book was written to share my experiences to help others silently suffering online."

When Ruff was eight years old, she began studying and practicing oil painting in traditional Renaissance style. In her forties, Ruff's work was rebirthed into vivid abstracts in the form of acrylic painting via synesthesia, using her pastry palette knives, her "dancing" fingers, and drip painting onto an array of canvas mediums including linens, plywood and masonite.