About the Art

For the greater part of her life, Ruth Terrill creatied a body of work that is both provocative and confrontational. Although she refers to herself as a “Visionary Surrealist,” one will find many other influences, inspirations, and correspondences throughout her work; Dada, Surrealism and Magic Realism; Hannah Höch and Max Ernst; and many other strains and veins, from the Renaissance all the way up to the present. But ultimately her work remains singular and unique, existing outside of the “Art Scene” and its superficial commercialism. Although a thoroughly “modern” artist in the truest sense, she also strongly identifies with Renaissance art, with its use of religious imagery and symbolism.

The statement that follows below concisely delineates the basic tenets of Ruth’s own personal philosophy and her creative process, which apply to both her paintings and her collages. The collage became her preferred medium in the 1980s, as she found that she was able to express her ideas and dream imagery more expediently in the collage format than under the constraints of the larger, time-consuming paintings.

Following the statement are several quotations that Ruth has selected over the years which also convey similar philosophical ideas relevant to her work.

Statement

My work is based on my interest in existential and metaphysical ideas. It is a reflection of my life long struggle to understand the meaning of life and death. In other words, my art is central to my spiritual search.

My creative process can be described as a contemplative dialogue between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The images I use are based on visions that come to me from dreams and waking imagination in response to meditating upon certain philosophical/spiritual questions.

I work with collage as my medium because this technique parallels the mind’s way of forming dreams. By reorganizing the elements of everyday life in unexpected combinations, dreams can often hint at hidden truths and multiple meanings and lift us out of our ordinary view of things. Following a similar process, I modify and combine pieces of images “found” in daily life in order to explore the possibilities for seeing the world from a more transcendent perspective.

The general theme running through all my paintings and collages is about the surrender of one’s personal identity and rebirth into a more universal self or whole. Therefore, most of the imagery deals symbolically with the themes of surrender, transformation, death, and transcendence.

These images have been greatly influenced by my interest in Buddhism, Jungian psychology, alchemy, and magic. Perhaps the most important source of my imagery has been the cosmology of the Great Mother or Goddess. This female cosmology seems to resonate with my feelings about the cycle of creation-destruction. By meditating on various symbols, and using them in my art, I find it deepens my perception of the interconnectedness and indivisibility of all things. This state of oneness or wholeness I see as the ultimate goal of the spiritual path.

Selected quotations relevant to Ruth Terrill’s work

“Only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable and eternally new. Only he knows truly that all things are couched in eagerness to become something else, and it is from this universal tension that he draws his power.”

                                                                                    —Peter Beagle

“The artist places more value on the powers which do the forming than on the final forms themselves.”

                                                                                    —Paul Klee

“There is only one valuable thing in art; the thing you cannot explain.”

                                                                                    —Georges Braque

“Every object has two aspects; the common aspect, which is the one we generally see and which is seen by everyone, and the ghostly and metaphysical aspect, which only rare individuals see at moments of clairvoyance and metaphysical meditation. A work of art must relate something that does not appear in its visible form.

                                                                                    —Giorgio de Chirico

“An object awakens our love just because it seems to be the bearer of powers that are greater than itself.”

                                                                                    —Jean Bazaine

“The artist’s eye should always be turned in upon his inner life. and his ear should be always alert for the voice of inward necessity. This is the only way of giving expression to what the mystic vision commands.”

                                                                                    —Vassily Kandinsky

“Your treasure house is in yourself. It contains all you’ll ever need.”

                                                                                    —Hui-Hei

“Only the man who can consciously assent to the power of the inner voice becomes a personality.”

                                                                                    —Carl Gustav Jung

“Man’s goal is to seek communion with the Presence behind the phenomena, and to seek it with the aim of bringing himself into harmony with this absolute reality.”

                                                                                    —Arnold J. Toynbee

“Like visions in a dream, so must we regard all things.”

                                                                      —Nagarjuna