Ruth Piper

‘Land of Plenty’ - New paintings 2016

Central to my work are the notions of transition and transformation that link to a strong sense of place both physical and psychological.
The process of painting is experienced as a fictional layering of the past and present that can look back at the viewer with a glimpse of something hidden, not yet known or experienced.

Creatures of our environment, shaped by climate, geology and atmosphere, we are in transit from moment to moment negotiating and adapting to the demands of our immediate surroundings. Limited by our vision at any one moment we only know what we can see, all else is fiction. Events beyond our vision are anecdotal and can only be imagined.
We are alone but vulnerable to a collective unconsciousness that influences constant tiny shifts in our constructed axis of reality.

The title, ‘Land of Plenty’ was inspired by the complexities of an existential nostalgia for the ‘tranquility’ and ‘simplicity’ of another world. Because the conditions of true happiness and contentment are fugitive and fleeting and depend on a consciously edited viewpoint of reality we are compelled to live life on the edge. Forever in the gap between the surface and the underworld and the superficiality of first encounters with only a vague sense of what lies beneath.

The paintings are located in the transitional mythological space between knowing and the unconscious, where dreams and reality merge.

Exhibitions 2016
'Land of Plenty' Land House Arts, Bath.
Millfield Open Summer Show.
Evolver Cover Prize Exhibition. Black Swan Arts, Frome
'Shifting Divides' Group print & drawing exhibition, Centrespace Gallery, Bristol

Website: www.ruthpiper.com