Exhibitions don't always immediately grab you. Sometimes you do have to give paintings or artworks sufficient time to speak to you, to tune into them. Impatience or a desire to get the gist and quickly move on, undermine one's receptivity and hence the depth of appreciation suffers. Its not always an easy thing to obtain a true grasp of where an artist is coming from. Length of time is important.
Ruth Butler's paintings do communicate themselves with a great and alluring immediacy, I felt I had an instinctive sense of them, almost as a living process taking place before your eyes. There on the canvas was a painting evolvong in a way that was as instinctive and in the moment as anyone can make it. She has had to give this time to mature, as does the viewer.
Her paintings are both loose yet controlled, geometric yet organic, solid yet fluid. Instinctual improvising takes time, and more importantly, a patient sensitivity. In order to uncover where a work is at, to tell where it needs to go next. Some paintings obviously begin with hand drawn patterning, but several layers later end up with a soft semi transparency and calligraphic natural references. Others appear to take exactly the opposite path, moving towards slabs of colour bestrided by erratic lines.
Using a broad range of mark making, and an alive vibrant colour sense. Her paintings in the end create a mood that I personally found exciting to visually engage with. The most obvious art historical reference points stylistically are Paul Klee, but the overall assault of pattern and form had strong associations for me is with that most outsider of artists, Friendesreich Hundertwasser.
Her instinctual layering approach I recognise in my own art process, but I've never quite had the courage, so far. to fully break out of a meticulously controlled execution mindset. However frustrating the devotion of time and discipline to that becomes. This exhibition has encouraged me to drop my long use of gouache paint, a medium so suited to flat colour that it almost insists on tight form and execution. I'm taking up exploring the qualities and possibilities of acrylics. Watch this space.
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