RUTH HARTLEY - PAINTER ‘Art is the ritual rearrangement of dirt both physical and psychic to ameliorate death’ I make art because I have to make art. I spent my childhood and schooldays in Zimbabwe, studied at the Michaelis School of Art in Cape Town and learnt politics in Natal. In the sixties I left South Africa to seek asylum in liberating London. In the seventies I became a mother, wife and Feminist in England. In Zambia in the eighties I worked as teacher, art gallery director and expatriate economic migrant. In the nineties I returned to live, learn and paint in East Anglia. I have always made art though at times been lost for direction, identity and method. My art is the process by which I explore connections, conflict, creativity and communication.
