Ruth Sumner
'Painting No. 9'

Oil on canvas
153 x 183 cm

Ruth Sumner was born in Burton on Trent in 1968. She studied at Leicester Polytechnic 1987-90 and the University of Central England 1999-2001. Her first group exhibition was 'Young Contemporaries' Whitworth Art Gallery Manchester 1990 and her first one-person exhibition was at the University Centre Northampton 1994. Since 2000 she has been Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at De Montfort University Leicester. Recent exhibitions include 'Fame Made Me a Wreck' Cityspace Birmingham 2001 and 'Recent Paintings' (one-person) Woodlands Gallery Blackheath and Citrix Systems Artspace Cambridge 2001.

"This is one of a series of paintings that use a consistent and controlled set of marks in an apparently gestural and expressive format. Potential forms, cartoons and doodles emerge from these marks but exist precariously on a claustrophobic and spatially uncertain surface.

What interests me is the moment of slippage between one reading and another, and keeping the painting in a state of flux whereby it is constantly caught at a point of revealing itself."