Art Opening Reception
at the Old Town Center for the Arts
Landscape Oil Paintings by
Nancy Ruby
Saturday, October 16, 2021 6:00 pm
Concert with EHGG & Taylor Marie begins at 7:00 pm
OTCA is showing a collection of landscape oil paintings by local artist Nancy Ruby.
Nancy Ruby has been living and working as a fine artist in Sedona since 2008. She concentrates on painting and ceramics, exploring and experimenting with technique and process. Her studio is at home where she lives on national forest land in a rural area outside of town with her husband, Michael, and their cat, Bodhi. She is a member of Sedona Visual Artists Coalition and participate in their annual show and Open Studios tour.
Nancy lived in Texas for the first 50 years of her life. Born in San Antonio, and graduated from Trinity University in 1978 with a B.A. in art and a concentration in painting. For the next 30 years, she worked in Houston in the interior design business, owned a decorative painting company and worked as a rug and fabric designer. She continues to design for Tribute Goods, a linen company in Houston. She has participated in juried art exhibitions in Arizona, Texas, Virginia, and Georgia, and created a mural for the Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston. In the Verde Valley area she has shown at The Manheim Gallery, Rumi Tree Art Gallery, Verde Art Gallery at Yavapai College Clarkdale, White Hills Gallery and The Sedona Hub.
Nancy is an active participant in The Sedona Coyote Poets, she creates and contribute poems regularly and shares them in public readings. Her interests include geology, anthropology, biking, hiking, gardening, traveling and living an uncomplicated life close to nature.
In her words she describes her art and process:
My paintings convey a sense of place. I am inspired by natural landscapes and incorporate forms, images, and symbols into my paintings and sculptures.
My work takes viewers on a journey, revealing discoveries I have made by observing and connecting with the land. My work is interactive. Within each layer, I leave something of what has come before as signposts of the beginning, middle, and end of my creative process.
This understanding becomes possible because the methodology of art teaches on a visceral level. My process becomes articulated through the tools and techniques I use: the directness of color, unlimited fluidity and variety of paint, drawing into wet paint, using loose turpentine washes, building up layers and tearing them down—all the while allowing my own experience to drive the piece. Then I soften the edges of what I see to invite viewers to have a personal embodied experience of the scene.
If unprimed canvas and natural raw pigments can create a representation of the Earth’s ancient movement for me, then perhaps my creation will touch another person in a similar way.
Using sliced up coffee bags and twigs to create a bird nest can make one wonder if the nest was really made by a bird. Of course, it was not, but that is both the lie and magic of art. We makers create in order to convey a new view of some thing that already exists, presenting a slightly or maybe remarkably different perspective.
My creations are an outer manifestation of an inward journey of discovery and self-examination. To bring each piece to closure requires making every effort to communicate a complete portion of any story, whether it be from a wide or narrow focus.
I respect that my life experiences teach me of the world’s constant changes. I can only hope that I am a good student, open, unguarded, available to learn what is being offered at the moment. I seek common ground, which, for me, comes from my connection with the land.
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