Ruth Viktoria Ward
Mixed media

ruthvward@verizon.net
7204 Oakridge Avenue
Chevy Chase, MD 20815
301 913-0384

Ruth Viktoria Ward’s most recent birch bark and encaustic paintings have expanded her mixed media works. They reflect her experience of summers spent on a farm in the Adirondack Mountains of New York where nature and art meet. An initial fascination with the sculptural shapes of the bark from fallen trees in the woods led from collecting to using them as support for intuitive, meditative oil paintings without representational details. The encaustic works are based on an ancient medium (the Egyptian Fayum Portraits) that has re-emerged and been adapted to contemporary art: beeswax, pigment and resin are fused with heat to reach a preservative quality and permanent state.

The German-born mixed media artist and photographer’s past diverse art work reflects her multicultural experiences of living, working and teaching for many years in Europe, Egypt, Pakistan, and Morocco. Her early commitment to the feminist art movement led to numerous collaborative projects and exhibitions with Moroccan writer and sociologist Fatema Mernissi--the latest is an exploration of the work of women weavers in the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco.

RVW received an MA in German Literature from George Washington University, Washington, DC in 1964 before embarking on a career in the visual arts, studying at the Corcoran School of Art, the Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart, Germany, and the Pratt Graphics Center in New York City.