Instruction

Pismo Beach, California artist, Ruth Collis, studied graphic design, did logo & business card freelancing. Receiving her AS degree, she designed websites, then pursued her own fine art interests for meaning in life. From the start of her figurative style in loving long hair, Ruth's first sale as a career was an international sale, followed by more commissions from friends & family. As thicker acrylic pastes became available from manufacturers, Ruth found fascination with textures faster than they could be made.

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Inspiration

Ruth Collis finds passion in using all different tools to create effects, makes up her own tools, like using a literal broom as the brush used in her painting called "Broomstick Tulips," or just plain trying to replicate every day things with this thick impasto style paint she calls Sculpture Painting. She has been able to find a way to make this paint transparent as well as being thick, that it looks like glass, and loves how flexible it is when dried, that it can even be rolled up into organ pipe coral shapes. Ruth is inspired with manufacturers & their constant new improvements of paint & supplies she must try out.

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What events or upbringing have shaped artistic direction?

What got Ruth into this Thick Paint was seeing an art manufacturer long ago, make cake decorating tips screw on the end of a paint tube. Their paint deflated & it phased out for years, but she never forgot the exciting idea. As the thick paint was developed better to hold ridges, she has now been able to create exciting forms & bring them to life.

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Seeing the grandness of Vegas,  Ruth immediately wanted to create a masterpiece of a painting so high in impasto relief & sculpture that it would stand off the surface of a painting a whole foot in depth, of all kinds of fabulous coral shapes, that could go in an aquarium, Vegas, or some underwater enthusiast's home.

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A serious illness in 2011 & healing time led to furious testing where transparency was discovered, separate layer drying for sculpting was sparsely found in various art supply & YouTube tutorials that Ruth further developed & transformed in the fine art world. She then started creating instructional templates for Squeeze Painting that others can do, followed by an explosion of techniques creating a multitude of thick paint styles including the Jellyfish Squish, Veiny Press & Lift, Cut Paint, Marbleizing, Lace, & sea anemone formed from quilling tutorial blogs. These discoveries from testing have happened faster than Ruth can make whole painted examples.

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What has influenced Ruth?

*Liquitex cake tips​

*YouTube cake decorations

*Affordable prices for the volume of thick paint needed for this style

*Cool tools

*Broomstick brush size

*Classy environments and finer homes

*Image and lifestyle of more importance than just selling paintings

*Ralph Lauren's standards of quality & design

*Seeing just the diversity of what this thick paint can do

*Wanting to see what something would look like in 3D paint

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Current work

Ruth Collis' current work of palette knife textures, & sculpture shapes is now incorporating more rigid panel supports for improving the paintings' quality, & using new textures on the market such as crackle paste for a dry earth texture, Crystal Mortar for transparent crystal effects, spongy molding pastes for free-form lightweight structures, gels for structure & substance of course, & gritty texture pastes for resembling coral & textured elements.

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Artistic Direction

Ruth Collis would like to revel in more free-form paint sculptures to push the limits of this medium, offer an online video course of instruction to anyone in the world with a higher speed internet, create that Coral Masterpiece of 1 foot relief depth off the canvas or panel surface, & possibly create Blind Paintings... paintings without pigment of just structure & felt-form for the blind to see able to see with their hands. If all goes well, it would be Ruth's dream to have an Artistic Gardens Resort of peace, quiet, beauty, & tranquility that could offer an escape & artistic retreat experience. Ruth hopes that in the mean time, people can be educated about our oceans & life below with her coral & sea fan sculptured paintings, or use her templates coming soon as guide to eventually making their own sculpture paintings.

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What does Ruth's art do for others?

​​Ruth's work of 16 paintings is in corporate collection at the Foothills Psychological center in Upland, California, where many doctors & office personnel have commented the artistic creativity brought a newness & happiness to their place, where they were wanting to achieve a "less clinical" feel, & for their patients to feel comfortable & at home.​​