I, Ruth Elaine am a renaissance woman. I can build a sofa from the beginning, design a logo, sew a wedding gown, re-wire a vintage Triumph Spitfire, design some fabric, reproduce artwork, cater a community fund-raiser for 200, paint watercolour, teach a knitting class and the list goes on. Creative from the core since early childhood, I find my greatest inspiration in the natural world. Shapes, forms, textures, and colours, all inform my play and creations. Details unseen by the casual observer catch my attention, especially when I have my camera in hand. Proportions, frameworks, the relationship between things, and the “bones” of things interest me.
When the next creative adventure beckons – and there are constantly new ones calling, I seek to understand how something works and proceed to teach myself how. That isn’t to say I don’t learn from others, rather that I appreciate those who have come before with knowledge and wisdom to share and I find my own path to it and through it. My greatest joy is finding a new challenge to dive into, a new adventure to take, and ideally someone to share it with.
The willingness to always show up as a learner, has allowed me to encompass a very broad range of skills which I happily put to use in the service of creativity. I am also highly motivated to use and re-use found materials in my efforts to create – exactly the way nature works all the time. Nothing in nature is ever wasted, it all gives itself up eventually to the re-creation of something new and change is the constant. Always a death and rebirth. And so it is with each of us.
I presently live and create, mainly on Vancouver Island, Canada, but truly I go where adventure calls. Given the right motivations, anything and anywhere is possible. Thanks for allowing me to share my creative adventures here with you.
Ruth Elaine