The beauty of the natural world has inspired my art for as long as I can remember.
The “Covid Years” were stay-close-to-home times, and the paintings I did then reflected my feelings about the surrounding landscape of my home and neighborhood. I found myself getting more gestural and expressive.
The result was more about what I was feeling rather than just what I was seeing. It was also during this time that I began working with gouache, a water-based opaque paint that is challenging and fun. I now enjoy painting in both gouache and oil equally.
This past year and a half have been filled with surprising and delightful art making adventures now that travel is back in my life. As the world has begun to open up again, I see that the lessons of those intimate, reflective Covid years are still influencing my art. A combination has emerged that is based on something I see that is real, but experienced through the lens of how it makes me feel.
With gouache, I am now easily able to travel with my paints. In 2022 I had the wonderful opportunity of staying…and painting…in a lovely old apartment right on Lake Como in Italy for an entire month. The views of life on the lake were spectacular, changing with the weather and the time of day. In June, 2023 I spent a month traveling in Switzerland. This trip included two week-long stays in apartments overlooking Lake Lucerne and Lake Lugano, each with beautiful views from their terraces. Most recently, a September painting trip to Umbria in Italy was a dream come true.
I maintain a studio in my home in Chevy Chase, DC. To contact me about my work or to arrange a studio visit, please email me at: ruthmarcus99@gmail.com
Lake Como, summer 2022: painting on the terrace.
Ruth Marcus received her B.A. and M.S. from Queens College of the City University of New York, majoring in Fine Art with a minor in Education. She shared her passion for art with young people during her career as an art teacher in New York City and Washington, DC. She was co-head of the art department at the Dalton School in Manhattan for ten years before moving to Washington. For twenty-one years she taught art at Georgetown Day School. She now pursues her art full-time. Her works have been shown in New York City, Berkeley, CA, San Francisco, CA, Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia.
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