Ruth Dealy’s primary focus in her painting is on observation, of reporting what is seen without preconception and the “innuendoes and shadings of education, prejudice, previous art styles, personal taste and cultural trends.” Whether she is painting a figure (self-portraits) or landscape, her practice is a meditative one towards the goal of revelation, of finding transcendent wonder through the act of repeated observation. The resulting paintings balance between representation and spatial abstraction, with recognizable forms occupying fragmented spaces that speak more to the experience of what is seen than its physical character. Through her art, she seeks universal communication with the viewer, inviting all into a new experience and hopefully, a willingness to embrace the “sensation of falling from wonder to wonder.”
Dealy graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Master of Fine Arts in painting. From the late 1980s to the mid 1990s she was an instructor at the Rhode Island School of Design, where she taught painting and continuing education. Her paintings have been presented in exhibitions in galleries, museums, and public buildings around the U.S. She is the recipient of several grants and awards from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the New England Foundation for the Arts. Her paintings are held in the collections of the Perez Art Museum (Miami, FL), the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (Santa Barbara, CA), the Colby College Museum of Art (Waterville, ME), Rutgers University, Jane Vorhees Zimmerli Art Museum (New Brunswick, NJ), Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art (Providence, RI), Newport Art Museum (Newport, RI) and the Worcester Art Museum (Worcester, MA).
Dealy resides in Providence, RI.
