Ruby Lee Hill (She/They)

I am a multidisciplinary artist who is strongly influenced by texture and abstraction. My pieces are about how the materials look and feel. I enjoy the investigation of alternative textures on different surfaces. My forms and marks created by pressure are thoughtfully planned but also develop and evolve intuitively as the pieces are made. The act of applying pressure to canvas and the marks I make is a way for me to process memories from my past. This act gives me a state of euphoria that I am always chasing.

I am a witch and enjoy reading tarot. My life and my practice are deeply rooted in the metaphysical realm. I deal with a lot of signs and signifiers in my work similar to the cards in a tarot deck. I am a very spiritual person who likes to poke at organized religion and the ideas they create.  

I recently moved back to Wisconsin after living and working in Portland, OR. Being only a short drive to the coast I find myself grabbing inspiration from the textures, colors, and moodiness found in the Pacific Northwest. My work is deeply rooted in my queer experience and also the joy and liberation I have found by cleansing the negativity and suppression that I have accumulated in my childhood and throughout my life. My art and processes are a way to aid me in this clearing process.

 A lot of the ideas and concepts I talk about in my work focus on the first signs of spring and the happiness that comes with that time. I frequently find myself talking about rebirth and transitional periods. The regenerative quality of soil after a forest fire. I recently came out as a trans-feminine person, so these periods are very near and dear to my heart. My art is very much me and a part of my experiences. There’s always a little part of myself in every artwork I make.

Being a trans-femme artist, I find my work rejecting the gender binary but also playing and mixing the societal ideas of what the masculine and feminine is. I consider my work to be a collection and a mixture of all thing’s beauty, abstract painting, photography, and printmaking. With having multiple forms of art that I focus on; I work towards combining these processes into all my pieces. I enjoy pulling inspiration from classical antiquity and Greek mythology. Growing up queer I never had queer representation in the books I read or the media that was around me. This had led me to the exploration of the lack of queer representation in these two subsections.