Ruth Saunders

“Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see”…Paul Klee

I started painting around the time I retired from full-time teaching at the University of South Carolina in early 2015, something I’d wanted to do for many year. I began painting because I wanted to experience nature more directly and I believed that painting was a way to do that. That has been the case and I am enjoying the process of seeing and painting immensely. I began by taking short art classes, and private lessons from Dylan Critchfield. My explorations have included working with watercolor, gouache, oil, chalk pastel, oil pastel, charcoal, and graphite on paper, board, and canvas. I really like working with landscapes, especially when structures are included, and also like working with building interiors. 

My work is representational but I do not strive to be “photo-realistic”. Rather, my goals are to capture some of the “essence” of the “specialness” that I am seeing in ordinary places and things and to share that with others.