Ruth Bateman

Artist Statement

My work is rooted in the landscape, but it reaches beyond a simple depiction of place. The landscapes I create are not direct representations of specific locations; rather, they emerge from an internal world — a personal terrain shaped by emotion, memory, and lived experience. Through painting, I aim to articulate a feeling, a moment, or an atmosphere that exists somewhere between reality and imagination.

Over time, I’ve come to understand my practice as a process of constructing spaces I can inhabit — places born from both the challenges and the comforts of life. These painted worlds are grounded in landscapes I’ve felt deeply connected to, yet they evolve into living compositions that reflect what is happening within me. They exist in the in-between: part real, part invented; both abstract and figurative; simultaneously internal and external.

I am drawn to this sense of ambiguity — to the idea of a “non-place” that cannot be pinned down. My paintings invite viewers to project their own memories and emotions onto them, finding familiar echoes of somewhere they’ve been or something they’ve felt. In that way, the work becomes a shared emotional space — a landscape that is both mine and theirs.

Painting, for me, is also a form of emotional processing. It’s a way of switching off the rational mind and allowing the subconscious to speak. Each painting becomes a journey through a moment in time — a record of shifting feelings, uncertainty, and transformation. The work sits between comfort and discord, between naivety and refinement, mirroring the complexity of who I am. I don’t fit neatly into one category, and neither do my paintings. They are what they are: layered, uncertain, and honest reflections of the inner landscapes I inhabit.