Abstract Art
Artist: John Axton III. De-Young museum 1960 San Francisco
Artist Statement
Memory, time and place inform my work. It is a ritualized journey through the passage of time and the process of moment. It is about silence and the space between the silence. It is about connecting the invisible with the visible.
The work is sculpture, installation, painting and drawing, often in combination with one another. All of the work, whether objects held in the hand, hung on the wall or created as time- and site-specific environmental installations, indoors and outdoors, is a fine and meticulous layering of earth, mulch, bark, wax, sawdust, oak galls, cow manure, paint, cocoa bean hulls and other material.
The work is minimal in concept, conceptual in thought and expressive in the doing. The work is about process. The stillness and layering of time. I reach for what was there before me and will exist long after I am gone. I reveal, cut into, slice open. I strive for the essential and for what lies buried underneath.
I conceal and cover up and hide what needn’t be shown.
I merge who I am and was into who I will be.
Phe Ruiz began her academic studies at the University of Iowa in 1982 and continued to explore art at different universities until she reached the San Francisco Art Institute in 1990-1991. Her work, reminiscent of abstract expressionism, is completely uninhibited by a nearly chaotic out-pouring of her own instinct for balance and order. Working through personal struggles on the canvas, Ruiz creates deep, rich impasto surfaces that show her love of the medium and her trust in her own process. Powerful saturated colors of thick paint create a pattern of textural illusions that energize the surface of the canvas.
Solo shows include the Frederick Spratt Gallery, San Jose with Larry Evans James Willis Gallery, San Francisco and the Santa Cruz Goverment Building, Santa Cruz.
Group exhibitions at the Triton Museum of Art; the Missions Cultural Center, San Francisco; the San Jose Center for Latino Arts, San Jose and the National Writers Union Juried Exhibition, Carmel CA.
Biography from the Triton Museum of Art
10×6.25 inches oil on canvas
