Gina
Ruppert
What I Left Behind
oil on canvas, 24 x 36" |
I am a self-taught artist, with minimal instruction in art
from high school. I began painting on a whim in October 2003.
As a child, I loved to draw and paint, and would tell others
that I would be an artist when I grew up.
Along the course of my life I lost track of my artistic ambitions.
I endured several years of violent and sexual childhood abuse,
and so, in retrospect, I can say that my life became more
about survival. I studied literature at the University of
North Carolina at Asheville, and I will always remember how
I felt walking past the art buildings and watching students
work in their studios. I thought that I had missed my calling.
Life has a funny way of working itself out. Years would pass,
and I would get married twice, and have three children, two
boys and a girl. Somewhere along the way my life became more
peaceful and more predictable. It was as though I could finally
breathe, and as I did begin to breathe, I began to paint.
In a nutshell, I am an intuitive artist. After completing
several paintings, I did research to determine what I would
call myself. When I work on a piece, I go at it with the absence
of preconceived notions and just paint. I surprise myself
at what I do, and at times when I find myself freaked out
at what I am painting I continue working, believing that these
feelings are saying that I am on the right track.
Woman Rising
oil on canvas, 24 x 36" |
When I sell a painting, the experience is most surreal. The
idea that someone cares enough about something that I have
done to pay money for it is nothing short of mind-boggling
to me. I did not begin to paint with the ultimate goal of
making money; I just wanted to paint. I wanted to discover
who I really am inside of myself, to recapture a childhood
dream, and to do what I love. I have a way of perceiving things
that words cannot capture. I see the world through a very
female perspective. I have finally discovered a way to express
ultimately to myself how I see things, and the journey has
been both frightening and breathtaking. Witnessing someone
moved by my work gives me the sensation that I have finally
discovered my life’s purpose.
My current emphasis has evolved into a self-healing process
for me. Recovering from the abuse and violence has always
been a part of my work. I paint the human female figure because
this best illustrates what is occurring in my head and in
my heart, and since I am female, I equate this experience
from the female perspective in what I do. I paint because
I feel that I have to. At one time, I mourned my past; felt
that it made me inferior, broken, and incomplete. Now I celebrate
the experience, because it has made me who I am.
|
