The House by the Steps

Artist-printmaker Ruth Dent expresses her emotional response to music, literature and
live performance through colourful and gestural abstracts. Working on an interpretation,
she endeavours to capture its essence in visual form, taking into account its purpose,
meaning, history, location and connections with places and/or people associated with the
piece.
Recent bodies of work include interpretations of Choral Evensong, John Ireland’s Te Deum
in F, Britten’s War Requiem and Virginia Woolf’s first novel, ‘The Voyage Out’.
Broken grids appeared unexpectedly in her work last year. Intrigued by their appearance,
Ruth wrote: ‘grids represent a veil - allowing glimpses beneath, while distorting, hiding,
shading, holding back. Is this something to do with the spirit - which is unseen yet it's
presence is felt, known, acknowledged and simultaneously hidden from view?’.
Exploring these grids is her current focus, as she walks in the woods and works in her
studio, contemplating whether “a broken grid relates to breaking out?” and asking “is nature
hiding?, or what is nature hiding?”.
This ongoing body of work, titled ‘Visible, Invisible, Veiled’ uses print, paint, canvas, paper,
linen thread and flax to celebrate nature, the feminine and the spirit.