Looking at Vermeer Painting

Ruth Swain, an award winning artist based in Oxfordshire, works in oil, watercolour and pastel and loves to paint from life. Ruth worked in London, Hong Kong and New York as an advertising art director and illustrator. She brings this influence into her paintings by using visual ideas, and twists to her work, (portraiture, figure painting and still life). Ruth is a member of the Oxford Art Society, she was also long-listed for the Jackson’s art prize 2021, shortlisted for Signature Art prize, runner up in Holly Bush Women Painters Prize and her painting 'Hung out to dry' was exhibited in the Mall Galleries in the Royal institute of Watercolour artists in May 2021. Ruth exhibited twice at the Cloister gallery in Oxford in May and September 2021 and her painting ‘Pressing matters’ was selected by Kathleen Soriano to be shown in Ronagallery exhibition ‘For women by women’. She has also been shortlisted for the signature art prize 2021. Previously Ruth won the Readers Award in Artists and Illustrators magazine (Artist of the year 2017) and has exhibited in exhibitions such as the RBSA open exhibition 2017, OAS open in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and The RIPW exhibition 2019. Her painting ‘Essentials’ was on show in the Ashmoleum Museum, Oxford. Ruth is also a winner of the Liberty Arts Prize 2020 and 2 of her large portraits are being exhibited in the Liberty offices since July 2021 You can view and bid on the art there. The overall winner will be announced in March this year. In November 2021 Ruth appeared in Portrait artist of the Year painting actress Polly Walker. Ruth is currently working on a series of paintings involving books in her portraits. She often juxtaposes the book within the image which you can see from her self portrait with Lucien Freud-'Head in a book'. Her previous series of work which is shown in this gallery explores the idea of Still-life as a form of portraiture and focussed on Women's lives, making the often invisible work they do more visible, elevating the ordinary and mundane and finding beauty in the minutiae of everyday life. “I refuse to be invisible. I am a 50 something woman, an artist and I paint. It’s what I do. There are people and objects out there that go unnoticed, I want to make you see them, everyday beauty that we take for granted, I want to elevate their status to portray them in a new light.”