RUTH SEIDLER

After years of other endeavors, I have recently returned to making my own paintings. I work in a traditional manner, with a focus on form, light and texture.  I have always had a leaning in this direction, but it’s likely that my career as a painting conservator, treating and analyzing works of much, much older painters, has informed my own approach.

Lately I have been inspired by an idea about human response to beauty.

When we see something that is beautiful, our impulse is to reproduce it;  that is, what we find beautiful, we want -- and perhaps need -- to copy.  In the physical realm, we encounter the beauty of nature: flowers, birds, the clouds in a blue sky, our loved ones. Instinctively we create images of these things to display and to decorate our world, as a way to keep that beauty in mind. Humans' innate creative forces lead to myriad ways of representing nature, ranging wildly in style and focus.

In my most recent still life paintings I am looking at this idea of the human appreciation of natural beauty and the impulse to reproduce it. These compositions contain one or more decorative objects representing birds (greeting cards, wall paper, statuettes, etc.). These objects and images are not my own responses to the beauty of birds, but those of others.  My paintings are a tribute to the human ability to appreciate beauty and to the endless variety of our creativity.

In addition to still life painting, I have been exploring plein-air landscape, and a few less easily categorized projects. My studio is at my home in Alford, where I am grateful for a constant haven and daily re-awakening to beauty.