Artworks - Ruth Mulvie

Ruth Mulvie currently lives and works in Glasgow. She completed her Fine Art degree at Glasgow School of Art. During her degree she worked at a studio assistant for Peter Howson, one of Glasgow’s most celebrated artistic residents. Ruth’s iconography is quite different to that of Howson’s. In her work we find nostalgia for a bygone age, with colour pattern and pure composition all playing out equally important roles within her work. My work is fascinated with places of pleasure – swimming pools, theme parks, lidos, beaches, the seaside and holiday parks. I love the glamorisation and humour of these places, beauty pageants and the iconography. My paintings are brightly coloured, the brush marks often fast and thick, sometimes lighter and more careful. I want to capture a humour or oddness about these places. I work from both the imagination and fragments of old images that I piece together to create my own places of pleasure. I like to paint the women from these past eras in rows – almost militant – or to capture the scene of an ideal life. My paintings have been described as funky and retro. Ruth’s work has been exhibited widely throughout the UK and Europe. She had just enjoyed a successful two-woman show in Edinburgh.