Ruth Mordecai

My early training was as a sculptor studying the figure.  The conection to sculptural form has remained as I have turned to painting.  In 1998 I moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts from Boston and where I had formerly been a studio artist, my work was then refreshed and energized by painting outside, by the fresh air, the light, the sea and salt marshes and by new colors and divisions of space. One title of a painting from 2008 is:The Sun “Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful than the way the sun...” Tribute to Mary Oliver

            As a painter I have accumulated many symbols over the years that are then incorporated into my paintings. I am aware of these symbols as my visual language. The form they take on the paper or canvas reflects my process.  I may visualize an ancient symbol, a biblical story, the landscape, a life experience or a poem,  but how these will transform or regenerate into art is through some deeper connection.  In this way every few years a new body of work emerges as the work matures, and as I grow with the process of creating the work.

            On a grant to work in Jerusalem, I came upon an ancient 36” high ceramic vessel at the Israel Museum. It had abstracted drawings of an ancient sun and tree of life crudely carved into the clay.  References to these images and others like them have remained in my work over the last 16 years as I have been drawn to this minimal, primal kind of representation. Some of the titles from the 1980’s are:  Ancient Sun,Tree of Life/Woman Series, and Apples Hanging from the Sun 

            Beginning in 2009 many of the images that had been in separate paintings or earlier paintings or sculptures began to be stacked or piled with each other in one painting. This new body of work will be shown at Soprafina Gallery, 55 Thayer Street in Boston’s South End (SOWA), opening on November 5, 2010.

            Some of the titles for this exhibition:
            Between Painting and sculpture
            Mom and Apple Pie
            “I can do that” (reference to musical “Chorus Line”)
            Sacred Vessel
            Jacob’s Ladder “God was in this place and I i did not know” (Genesis 28:16)

            I paint on canvas or 100% rag gessoed manufactured or handmade paper using acrylics, oil paints, oil sticks and collage.  Sizes of the work for 2009/2010 are  15” x 11”, 30” x 22”, and 60” x 40”.