Green Line Cafe

Humans and Animals

Ruth Ansel

(now showing at the Green Line on Baltimore and 43rd Streets)

I record visual experiences through the language of brushstroke and pigment.  The act of painting a person, animal, or object imbues it with a contemplative importance that might otherwise go unnoticed. The shapes, colors and sizes of the strokes of paint that create the image on the panel, enshrine it.

The subjects of these paintings are the humans and animals closest to me: my children and pets at various stages of their lives.  It has been my privilege as a parent to intimately observe and comment on their lives over time.  I hope the observation of these particular humans and animals that I know so well will translate into a universal statement about the journey we travel as we nurture our children, watch them grow and then let them go.

I paint with egg tempera.  I mix the yolk of an egg to pigment to bind it to the panel.  Many layers of translucent brushstrokes create the glow of flesh, fur and foliage.

Posted March 5, 2009