Some artists enter the Master’s section over time. Others arrive with such clarity of presence and skill that the decision makes itself. Ruth Bateman is the latter.
Her paintings carry a rare embodiment. Mark-making that resonates below language, work you can feel. Colour, texture, and rhythm that seem to move through the body before the mind. Immersion, for example, does exactly what its title suggests. You can almost feel the texture of the air: the scintillation of stars, the scent of crushed grass, the chirring of insects, the atmosphere saturated with heat.
It is landscape, yes; but landscape as sensorial field. These paintings are intensely immersive, so full of presence they hold you. If you are looking for paintings that give you a world, a feeling, a place to stand, here they are. Joy. Adventure. Bliss. Colour as terrain. Emotion held in form.
Ruth’s work has been widely exhibited. Most recently, she was shortlisted for the 2024 Contemporary British Painting Prize and Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year. These accolades underscore her ability to create art that resonates deeply.
I’m an emerging contemporary artist working in north Devon and Cornwall whose practice pursues and questions the concept of the sublime and sense of place. Landscape and connectivity play an important role in my work as much as my concerns around climate awareness and environmental preservation.
I explore the landscape with my body: rock climbing, mountaineering, and cycling. This bodily experience of landscape is reflected in the kinetic way I create my paintings. I allow myself to be entirely instinctive with paint; mark making and choices of colour are initially intuitive and spontaneous, being tamed and refined as the painting progresses. I use conventional materials such as acrylics, oil, inks on canvas, along with non-conventional materials such as tea, mud, cardboard, bedsheets and other found surfaces.
My paintings are a conflation of both internal and external landscape; my work acts as an expression and celebration of difference, but also a statement of the tension between man and the environment. Being neurodivergent, I see art as another language which enables us to enter a world where there are no barriers. I utilise the communicative powers of visual expression to problem solve, ask questions, explore, give voice and empower.
(2023) Hope Triumphs Over Adversity, The Plough Arts Centre, Torrington
(2025) The Poly Spring Open 2025,, The Poly, Falmouth
(2025) Eyla, OFF!, Newquay
(2024) Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Sheffield
(2024) Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, Thames-Side Studios Gallery, London
(2024) 'Something Different - Exploration and Development' Collaborative, Back Lane West, Redruth
(2024) Contemporary British Painting Prize 2024, Bay Art Gallery, Cardiff
(2024) Studio KIND. Summer Open 2024, Studio KIND., Barnstaple
(2024) ‘Stepping Into Ourselves’, Fringe Arts Bath, Bath
(2024) Speaking Out: Changing Times, The Plough Arts Centre, Torrington
(2024) Friends of Burton Annual Open Exhibition, The Burton at Bideford Art Gallery & Museum, Bideford
(2023) A Darker Christmas, Studio KIND., Braunton
(2021) John Muir Award
(2023) The Eaton Trust
(2024) SANE Grant award