Welcoming a talented newcomer to the arts scene
For almost two decades, there has been an initiative in Chattanooga to create an environment that is hospitable to artists. From grants, incentives, and residencies to huge pieces of public art, the push to make Chattanooga an “Arts City” is finally paying off.
Nestled in the foothills of Lookout Mountain, one of our newest artists and her husband have built their home. Ruth Pearl is a welcome addition to the local arts community, creating a variety of gorgeous, soulful, and provocative drawings and paintings.
She explains why she chose Chattanooga, saying, “As a newcomer to the city, I saw public art everywhere. It is a young vibrant city that seems to embrace the arts, one of the reasons I chose to be here. Chattanooga lends itself to hosting a Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School which I would love to help bring to the city.”
Ruth has been making art for her entire life. She took a two year Foundation Course at Barnet College, Hertfordshire and followed that with a degree course at Portsmouth Polytechnic in Hampshire. Her main area of study was printmaking, the process of which is still influential to how she approaches painting, layering one color on another.
“We all gravitate to what we can do well, and I enjoyed drawing from an early age,” she explains. “The idea of becoming an artist was sealed in Kindergarten. My brother, four years my senior, saw my picture and pointed out that sky was everywhere, and that trees had branches and leaves rather than resembling lollipops. I incorporated these concepts into my next painting and arrived at a pivotal point when my teacher held it aloft with praise.”
After school, she and her husband lived in Kenya and South Africa for ten years, where she was an art teacher in schools and a theatre set painter. Creatively, she was influenced by the stark clarity, color and brilliance of the African landscapes and skies.
“When visiting art museums, I gravitate to the mid-nineteenth century onwards,” she says of her influences. “I love Degas and Lautrec for their depictions of people; Klimt for his ornate patterns and the pop artists for their boldness. Rothko’s have me in awe. Brian Rutenberg’s large landscapes inspire me with his delicious use of color.
“I also follow lesser-known artists on Instagram where it is motivating to see what other artists are doing. Instagram is a supportive community—a platform to both show your work and see what others are doing. There is a lot of talent and you can come across art that you wouldn’t usually encounter even going to galleries and museums. There are some artists whose work I’ve loved and thought ‘that shouldn’t work, but it does.’ This has given me the motivation to experiment—which sometimes works and sometimes doesn’t.”
Pearl paints directly on the canvas without a pre-drawing, usually beginning with large shapes of color which she works into, and line work comes in later. “Both my drawing and painting methods are largely intuitive. I have sufficient knowledge from training and experience that continues in the background as I learn more and add to that knowledge each time I work,” she says about her process.
“I mostly mix my colors first trying to keep to a limited palette, although sometimes I will use paint on my brush directly from the tube. I see the colors that I use, but may exaggerate them. The interplay of colors together can take on their own life!”
Her work can be divided into three categories—the first is her figurative work. After 12 years in Africa, she moved to Augusta where she attended open studio sessions for several years. She was delighted to find an equally good weekly opportunity at Townsend Atelier when she moved to the area last year. Four of her figurative pieces were accepted in the recent LIT Gallery Body Show. From that, one piece was included and sold at the elite Hunter Underground art auction.
The second category of her work is sunrises or sunsets, especially when they are over water. She creates abstracted acrylic seascapes from photos she takes of these dazzling moments. These exciting color explorations can be found at The Frame Shoppe and the Gallery on the Row Reunion Show in Augusta, GA.
The third category is painting or sketching musicians while they are performing. She delights in live concert painting especially when she enjoys the music being played—in Augusta it was mostly blues, and in Chattanooga it is bluegrass.
Pearl can be commissioned for individual pieces of art based on these three categories of artwork. Learn more about her work at marulatoo.com