2905 San Gabriel, Ste 101  /  Austin, Texas 78705
tel. 512.454.6671  /  fax. 512.454.9560

Jerry Ruthven:
Interpreting The Landscapes Many Moods

View the artist's work

email: [email protected]

A fifth generation Texan, Ruthven is drawn to the land: its rich history and natural beauty. As a child growing up in Blue Branch - just Blue to those who live in the tiny community fifty miles east of Austin, he played in the deep woods and napped among the fragrant groves of wild plums trees. He spent summer days jumping from stone to stone along the creek crossings and applied his vivid imagination to cloud watching. From the Indian arrowheads he found in neighbors' plowed fields, he developed an interest in the area's early peoples and their relationship to the land. Fishing pole in one hand and a sketch book in the other, he could easily have been a Norman Rockwell painting for Boys Life.

Unconsciously, he recorded the familiar imagery in his visual memory and filled sketchbooks full of pencil drawings. He collected "how to" books on painting and drawing; one in particular was the catalyst that led him to a career in fine art - Walter Foster's Robert Woods Paints Landscapes. "Wood," says Ruthven, "painted Texas like Texas is. His colors were so sharp and real. Seeing his work in that book had a tremendous impact on me. It was my starting point as a painter."

Today after over three decades as a professional artist, Ruthven continues to paint from the heart. He approaches a canvas from sky to foreground, a process he learned from studying Woods, and works until the imagery looks right - that is to say, until the painting jells with his visual memory. Figuratively speaking, he wants the viewer to walk through the painting and draws one in with focal interest as simple as stones in a dry creek bed, a winding dirt road, or a vanishing fence line - all elements that lead the eye through the painting to the horizon. Since the details provide the finesse, they must be accurate; so, he still spends many hours on location sketching and refreshing his visual memory. How does the light hit the rock ledge? From what perspective can the steepness of the cliff be portrayed. Endless drawings give the answers.

Jerry Ruthven's Texas landscapes are more than just an accurate depiction of the terrain's ruggedness or beauty. The ever changing weather plays its part, too. Anyone - farmer, rancher, outdoors man, gardener - who relishes the land learns quickly to read the weather, to recognize its mood. It is Ruthven's ability to translate these elements to canvas that adds life to his landscapes. His visual imagery engages all our senses: we feel the sultry heat from the haze on the horizon or smell the impending rain from the dark clouds rolling in from the west.

As an artist, Jerry Ruthven continues the legacy of Texas landscape painting - a tradition established a century ago by Julian Onderdonk. Perusing Onderdonk's archives, the similarity in imagery and visual expanse are evident; the commonality is without a doubt the allure of the region's vastness. In her book, The Onderdonks: a Family of Texas Painters, Cecilia Steinfeldt noted that Julian (Onderdonk) not only painted the Texas landscape, he interpreted its many moods. The same can be said for Jerry Ruthven today.

A fifth generation Texan, Jerry Ruthven describes his painting style as impressionistic realism reminiscent of the Hudson River School. Basically self-taught, he was enthralled from an early age with the American western landscape artists - Church, Moran, Bierstadt. For over twenty-five years he has painted on location throughout the Texas Hill Country and the wooded areas of East Texas. An avid outdoorsman, he captures on canvas the peaceful solitude and seasonal hues of the land which is so much a part of him.

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