The Art of Looking Closely: A Quiet Conversation with Ruth End on Following Her Own Path

It’s a warm July morning. Cloudless blue skies hang over Cheltenham as sunlight catches the bright green front door of a Regency townhouse. Footsteps approach and Ruth End smiles, a quiet, curious smile behind round glasses, and welcomes me into a home that feels like stepping inside one of her sketches. Ruth’s house and basement studio are a fascinating space, filled with eclectic objects. Books, postcards and treasured objects crowd every surface. Prints lean against walls, while shelves groan beneath rows of handmade ceramics. It is a room built over decades of looking, collecting, and making. A large old antique-looking desk sits in the center of the studio, with a stool. The space is quiet and calm. Occasionally, someone passes the basement window. From inside, only their shoes appear, crossing the light above us before disappearing again. The smell of print fills the air and as Ruth stirs her tea slowly, she begins to talk me through her life as an artist.

Photography by Naomi Ness

For Ruth, making art was never a decision; it was simply who she was. She grew up with music; books, her mother taking her to museums and was always encouraged to draw. “There was never anything else really, I just drew, I would go into my own world and draw, I just went with what I loved”, she describes softly. Ruth studied Fine Art in Cardiff in the 1980’s and then went to live and work as an artist in Cheltenham where she remains, “I have done what I wanted to do and followed my path, I had never been to Cardiff before so at 19, it felt quite exotic, there was a romance about living on the edge of society and being comfortable with it”.

Ruth has always fitted art around her life, her daughter and family, now pursuing her craft full time. She hopes that people see “beauty and joy, with a breadth of expression” in her prints. Being in her studio enables her to be completely herself and feels that she is very tied into the seasons, the natural world, the [changing] light and the feelings that come with that. For her, she enjoys the space of being on her own, although it can be lonely at times; she really enjoys working with Open Studios, belonging to a community of others who all have a common interest.

Outside of producing art, she enjoys walking, tending to her garden, and plays a recorder in a group of musicians twice a week. Taking a sip of her tea from an old small blue mug with the teaspoon still in it, she considers the answers to my questions carefully and with intent thought and consideration, voicing a quiet, yet confident thought or feeling. She self-proclaims herself to be an introvert but also enjoys the aspect of speaking with her buyers.

Print making became a useful thing to do when her daughter was young and only had very small pockets of time, enabling her to continue producing. It continues to captivate her because she “likes the immediacy of it, the magic about seeing what happens, and having something that’s available to more people”. She loves the unpredictability of print, the thinking and planning of layering the stencils, and the apprehension of seeing what will happen, no matter how long she’s been working at it. Taking a risk, pushing boundaries and being true to herself has often led to her best work.

Photography by Naomi Ness

She is currently working on a multimedia project involving one of the ponds in Cheltenham’s parks, working with poets and musicians to blend images from the pond with music. She also recently produced a book, with a trail map around Cheltenham, currently for sale in Hatchards bookshop, Montpellier, in which you can open each of the images from different months and hear the poem narrated by the author that goes with it through a QR code. Collaborating with poets and musicians has been rewarding, she says, even if sharing a creative vision can sometimes be challenging.

Some of the routes Ruth walks have been part of her life for more than forty years. Yet they never look the same twice. The changing light, the shifting seasons, and the smallest details continue to offer fresh ideas. She knows when an idea is worth pursuing when “you have that feeling inside you; it’s like falling in love”, she laughs. One of her biggest, inspirational artists is her neighbor, a picture restorer, “the quiet dedication she has to make something beautiful” is wonderful, she describes with admiration.

Ruth feels that Cheltenham’s quiet, unassuming art scene is quite nice to have “as a bit of a secret, that you gradually find”. Unlike London or Bristol, where art is bold and, in your face, Cheltenham’s identity sits quietly, waiting to be discovered. As a small, quiet town with many green spaces, Cheltenham lends itself to artists. Local people love to see the places they frequent through the eyes of the artist, making them feel closer to it. Visitors often also respond to the emotion within the piece and will tell Ruth personal stories about why her pieces speak to them; she really enjoys making that “deep connection” with her buyer.

Ruth’s prints have also acted as a space to carve out time for herself at difficult times in her life and allowed her to express her emotions. Unusually, Ruth’s art is not usually misunderstood, she likes to make things clear, her pieces are figurative, she purposely chose landscapes so that they would be understandable to most people. Pieces that have not gone the way she planned, she often keeps for a while, and then will tear it up and start again, “I hate it, it makes me angry” she growls with a laugh, “I want it to work and I’m not a quitter”, she elaborates.

Before I leave, Ruth picks up a pencil almost absent-mindedly. She laughs that she couldn’t live without one. There is another print waiting on the desk; another walk through Cheltenham to take, another season to notice. After more than forty years of making art, she still isn’t thinking about the piece after next, only the one in front of her. One drawing, one print, one quiet act of observation at a time.

Photography by Naomi Ness

Links

Ruth End's website

Naomi Ness is a BA student on the Journalism/Communications and Media Course at University of Gloucestershire.

Naomi Ness on Substack

Naomi Ness on YouTube (@Adventurous_Gnome)