bio
Ruth Owens is a figurative painter and video artist from the southern United States. She is represented by the Ferrara Showman Gallery, and belongs to the artist collective, “The Front,” both in New Orleans. Owens’ work preserves and contributes to the Black archive by using personal super-8 film references from the 1960’s in her work. She was invited to participate in the Prospect.6 Triennial showcasing a video installation and exhibited a solo show at the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art in the summer of 2024.
Photo by Jonathan Treviesa
Artist residencies include the Joan Mitchell Center, the Addison Gallery of American Art, theVermont Studio Center, the Studios at MASS MoCA and the International Studio andCuratorial Program in NY. Her work is in the permanent collections of the 21cMuseums, Ackland Art Museum at UNC-Chapel Hill, the Addison Gallery of AmericanArt, the Dale Center for the Study of War and Society, Beth Rudin DeWoody, FidelityInvestments Corporate Collection, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.
artist statement
I am a muddy river, and the sun bright moss, and a fat-bellied spider. I am this wild, wild
world, but we are not aligned. I am comfortable and drunk on extracted fruit and I am lost.
I long for a bygone relationship of mutual respect with nature in all its treacherous beauty. As a figurative painter and video artist who dreams of reconciliation between our anthropocentric tendencies and the natural world, I create optimistic imaginaries, all the while acknowledging the disconnect evident in our present ecological relationships. This dream is visual when folks dance fluidly and pelicans glide over waves. It is felt when I bring forth a worldview that is at one with the natural world; the west African Bakongo cosmogram’s circularity establishes the connectivity of all life. I also recognize our misalignment with other-than-human life, formally, in geometrically irregular painting dimensions, and visually, in presenting a sanitized and controlled view of flora/fauna in wallpaper designs. References for this figurative work is culled from archival super-8 film taken by my parents in the 1960’s. Defying linearity of time, I look to the past and to the future for positive paths of reconciliation with our one earthly home.