Ruth Frisch Dealy

Best known for her self-portraiture and still life studies of insects and flowers, Ruth Dealy has recently undertaken an exploration of landscape. These paintings are studies of the view from Ruth's Providence studio that overlooks Regent Place Park.

Clear in some of the images are the primary and neon colored structures of the playground, simple bars and poles, abstract in their own design. Less clear are the subtle articulations of foliage, shifting tree branches, the outlines of which hover in diffuse atmospheres.

The drawn lines in Ruth's paintings reveal her interest in structure and form; she reduces the trees and plant life of the park to the level of scaffolding, armature. The simplest lines edge out form. These paintings are meditations on ways of seeing and reproducing that seeing not exactly but honestly.

~ Sara Agniel, Gallery Agniel

   I am an artist who has lived and worked in Providence, Rhode Island for 34 years. I am interested in the tension between what is seen and what is felt. My work falls into two major groups, self-portraits and landscapes. Both are constants, mutated by time, light and season. I try to paint directly from my eye to my hand, without the shadow of editorial opinion falling in between.

   In The Land Of The Blind is a series of paintings created from looking out of my second story studio window at a Providence city park over a period of around two years.
   During this period I gradually lost my sight, which changed my painting from an observant dialogue to a kind of terrified prayer said over and over.
   This change from a linear narrative to a place without time was like an instant modernism.
   Once I could see again I was thrilled with the presence of the blind paintings but I was, Thank God, unable to reproduce that feeling of void, loss and terror.
   I have gone back to celebrating each leaf, twig and ray of light, but this time I am aware of the darkness.

~ Ruth Dealy

Ruth Frisch Dealy Documentary Movie

Ruth Dealy discusses the painting process from her studio in Providence's Valley district.

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Ruth Frisch Dealy International Exhibition Coverage

Jakarta's O Channel covers Ruth Dealy's Indonesian exhibition.

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Education

1971-1973  Rhode Island School of Design, M.F.A., Painting

1967-1971  Rhode Island School of Design, B.F.A., Painting

July 1965, 66  Haystack Mountain School of Arts and Crafts, Painting

Grants and Awards

Pell Award for Excellence in the Arts,  2004

Fellowship in Painting, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts,  2003-2004

Fellowship in Painting, Rhode Island State Council for the Arts,  2000-2001

Individual Artist Achievement Award, Rhode Island Business Volunteers for the Arts,  2000

Regional Fellowship in Painting, New England Foundation for the Arts/National Endowment for the Arts,  1994-1996

Project Support Grant to create a series of secular altar pieces, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts,
1990-1991

Fellowship in Two-Dimensional Art, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts,  1987

Project Support Grant to create fine arts on outdoor advertising billboards, National Foundation on the Arts/Rhode Island State Council on the Arts,  1975

Project Support Grant to create public murals at New England Community Arts Festival, Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, August, 1974

Teaching

Part-time Faculty, Painting Department, Rhode Island School of Design, 1988-1997

Instructor, Continuing Education, Rhode Island School of Design, 1988-1994

Organizer and teacher, in painting and drawings, the Hartford-Perry Storefront School, a federally funded OEO project to establish an art school in the Hartford Avenue Housing Projects, Providence, RI, 1970-1973