Ruth Bateman

I’m an emerging contemporary artist working in north Devon and Cornwall whose practice pursues and questions the concept of the sublime and sense of place. Landscape and connectivity play an important role in my work as much as my concerns around climate awareness and environmental preservation.

I explore the landscape with my body: rock climbing, mountaineering, and cycling. This bodily experience of landscape is reflected in the kinetic way I create my paintings. I allow myself to be entirely instinctive with paint; mark making and choices of colour are initially intuitive and spontaneous, being tamed and refined as the painting progresses. I use conventional materials such as acrylics, oil, inks on canvas, along with non-conventional materials such as tea, mud, cardboard, bedsheets and other found surfaces.

My paintings are a conflation of both internal and external landscape; my work acts as an expression and celebration of difference, but also a statement of the tension between man and the environment. Being neurodivergent, I see art as another language which enables us to enter a world where there are no barriers. I utilise the communicative powers of visual expression to problem solve, ask questions, explore, give voice and empower.