Art - Ruth Waterman

One of the finest solo violinists of her time, Ruth Waterman has always been fascinated by the art of interpretation. Now, instead of focussing on the works of the great composers, she creates paintings and collages that, in their own way, interpret and respond to the visual world.

In between her international tours, she would often take courses in drawing, painting, and printing, as well as crafts such as book-binding and felt-making. When her long performing career came to an end, she found herself drawn more and more to painting, and expanded her studies at London’s Citylit and the Slade (summer school). A portrait commission which came her way – and was hesitantly accepted – gave her the impetus to start spending serious time with paint.

Portraits remain an attraction, but her focus during the last few years has shifted to abstracts, semi-abstract landscapes and collages. She is particularly interested in movement and energy, and in how shapes interact with each other. Perhaps this is not surprising, considering that she is now working within an artform that is physically fixed and static, after devoting herself to music where sounds are in constant flux.

Ruth Waterman has had several solo exhibitions, including one that featured both photographs and the paintings inspired by them. Her camera normally accompanied her on her tours, capturing both mundane and unexpected sights in unusual ways. She has also combined photographs and text in a photographic essay on post-war Bosnia, where she was guest conductor of the Mostar Sinfonietta.

Artist biography

Beethoven portraits

Portraits

Tree-bark

Duos

One out of Many (collages)

Miscellaneous: Floating, Flight, Rocks

Artist biography

In between her international tours as a solo violinist, Ruth Waterman would often take courses in drawing, painting, and printing, as well as crafts such as book-binding and felt-making. When her long performing career came to an end, she found herself drawn more and more to painting, and expanded her studies at London’s Citylit and the Slade (summer school). A portrait commission which came her way – and was hesitantly accepted – gave her the impetus to start spending serious time with paint.

Portraits remain an attraction, but her focus during the last few years has shifted to abstracts. She is particularly interested in movement and energy, and in how shapes interact with each other. Perhaps this is not surprising, considering that she is now working within an artform that is physically fixed and static, after devoting herself to music where sounds are in constant flux.

Ruth Waterman has had several exhibitions, including one that featured her photographs and the paintings inspired by them. Her camera normally accompanied her on her tours, capturing both mundane and unexpected sights in unusual ways. She has combined photographs and text in a photographic essay on post-war Bosnia, where she was guest conductor of the Mostar Sinfonietta. [link] Her paintings and photographs are on permanent display at Room2 Chiswick.

Portraits

Every face speaks a multitude

I find faces endlessly fascinating, constantly changing, from one moment to the next revealing and masking who we are. It all started with Beethoven. “Do another, do another”, my art teacher instructed blithely, and on the sixth or seventh try, a portrait of Beethoven emerged that seemed to speak of ‘Beethoven’. And then came another, and another, different ‘Beethovens’, but nonetheless ‘Beethoven’.

What surprised me at the time was that all these Beethovens were based on the same image. And after all these years, I still enjoy making paintings from a single image and seeing what comes up. For instance, one photograph produced a series of portraits in which the person appears to age fifty years. In painting a face – or indeed any object – numerous times, the physical likeness becomes, for me, subservient to something more essential that can surface if allowed. Faces can contain ambiguity, contradictions, hints of emotions, memories, tensions; and often, an existential questioning. Capturing the questioning, the subtlety of feelings barely seen, or an intense pile-up of emotion, is what absorbs me and keeps me at it.

Tree-bark

Branching out (photographs and paintings)

Shorn of their leaves and baring their trunks to wintry light, trees can be just as eye-catching in January as when they are dressed in their summer finery. I am particularly drawn to their barks – the detail and variety, the patterns and rhythms and colours – photographing as many as I can find. This has inspired a series of paintings based on the surface of each tree trunk. Immersing myself in small patches of bark led to their shapes and colours and energies evolving, distilling, and – eventually – branching out into abstraction. The paintings are small, reflecting the close viewpoint, and each group includes the photograph which inspired them.

Duos

Pandemic twosomes

Two bodies floating in space – are they completely autonomous, or do they relate to one another?

Are we able to see one without being affected by the other?

Alternatively are we able to see both simultaneously?

And does a thread of connection influence our perception of each one?

Since this series was painted during the time of coronavirus, I can’t help thinking that these paintings reflect the experience of suspension, separation and isolation together with an unexpected solidarity between strangers and communities.

One out of many

Collages

One of the perennial bugbears of artists is storage. Unless one lives in a castle, there’s never enough room to store all the paintings that have accumulated over the years, especially the also-rans and the experiments, those that don’t quite work but perhaps could be given life with just a few dabs here and there… One day I decided to have a clear-out, but was immediately faced with works that contained patches I was loathe to part with. On the other hand, I couldn’t bear the thought of repainting them. So I tore out the good bits!

There they were, different shapes and sizes, thrown higgledy-piggledy onto the table, and as I contemplated them, my roving eye began to see intriguing juxtapositions and shapes.

That’s how it started. With torn paintings, fragments, lines stopping in mid-air, broken shapes. Now the question was how to piece them together, create relationships, give them a place within a dancing whole.

Miscellaneous

Collages

Old material

Although Ruth Waterman has been painting, on and off, for years while taking art classes at Citylit and the Slade, it wasn’t until a portrait commission came her way that she let herself spend serious time with paint. Her portraits of Beethoven are hanging in a prominent London music studio, as well as in homes up and down the country.

Beethoven Portraits
Portraits and Miscellaneous

Beethoven Portraits

From the 1812 life mask as sculpted by Hagen

Mr Beethoven (1)
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Mr Beethoven (2)
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Signed museum-standard giclée prints from original oils (unframed) are available in two sizes: A4 (20 x 29 cms) and A3 (29 x 39 cms).

UK customers can purchase prints online using the buttons below. Overseas customers, please contact admin@ruthwaterman.com as postage will need to be added to the cost.

Mr Beethoven (1) – A4 – £75 including UK postage

Mr Beethoven (1) – A3 – £90 including UK postage

Mr Beethoven (2) – A4 – £75 including UK postage

Mr Beethoven (2) – A3 – £90 including UK postage

Portraits and Miscellaneous

Ruth Waterman writes:

“Every face speaks a multitude.
In a portrait, each line, each colour, each shape uncovers one moment of flickering energy, encompasses an ambiguity, fixes paint to open a question. A portrait seeks the question at its most intense, when it can no longer be avoided.
I am setting out to find the questions.”

Below is a selection of paintings; to view more and to make purchases, please visit R A Waterman Art.