Ruth Jean Glenn was born May 9th, 1943 in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Growing up, she drew continuously. Her parents always made sure she had paper and Crayolas. Big boxes of crayons were a standard gift she eagerly received on a regular basis. Coloring books frustrated her because she did not want to stay within the lines with the colors. She always wanted to blend the lines and make them disappear and restructure the original picture. “They finally quit giving me ridged structured coloring books and paint by number sets and my mother started buying me blank newsprint paper by the roll to draw on. We lived 45 miles from a shopping area and if I ran out of paper I was in a panic. To this day I have a fear of running out of paper.”
Ruth was raised during an era when most people thought Home Economics was all the education women needed in a small farming community. The local educational system in the late 50's and early 60’s, being a product of its own society, did little to promote young girls to continue their education past high school. Personal ambitions beyond being a “good wife” and bearing many children were thought frivolous and frowned upon by many members of the rural populace.
“I can not remember a time that I did not think of my self as an artist. I never had an art class in High School. My parents and teachers suggested teaching Home Economics as the only real career option. As it neared time for college orientation I was very interested in the art department but when it came time to actually sign up for school my parents said there is no money for college.” The High School offered no help in understanding how to get aid for college and her parents had no resources. As a result in 1960 she married John Lewin a rancher living in Hays Springs, Nebraska.
“I am not academically trained. I have just kind of stumbled through building my own techniques through trial and error. I have explored several mediums and when I see something happen I like, I follow it and develop it my own way. I could not afford workshops very often and when I did scramble up the money for one I was stunned that they were not using archival materials or light fast pigments, and disappointed the ‘professionals’ were not presenting information accurately or at least to the extent of what I had already learned. I would take a class eventually because I would think somebody has to know more about this, but I usually wound up thinking, I must not be a very good sheep because I do not follow very well. So I have since applied my previous experiences from these workshops and classes to what I present to students. I emphasize the basics and try to consider questions my students might want answered. I teach people to paint, not to follow. Your individuality is more important. I have taught hundreds since I began teaching classes in 1983. Unfortunately, when I am teaching it is hard to have time to concentrate on actually painting.”
Important Influences
Becoming her ritual from the time she was 7 or 8 years old, Ruth would sit at the mailbox and wait for the Saturday Evening Post to be delivered, anxiously waiting to see the painted picture on the cover. The weekly magazine brought illustrations by artists like John Clymer (1907 – 1989), Thornton Utz (1914 – 1999), Amos Sewell (1901 – 1983), and most especially Norman Rockwell (1894 -1978). The young artist had ample opportunity to absorb those images. Of the artists Ruth would encounter during those formative years, Rockwell and Andrew Wyeth (b. 1917) she remembers were her two most important influences. In fact a number of family members have since given her books on Rockwell because they remember as a child how much she liked his work. ”Wyeth and Rockwell were my first true exposure to professional artists. The realism impressed me with the communication and emotional impact displayed in their work. I remember seeing Christina in publication the first time [Christina's World, A. Wyeth, 1948]. I remember being simply in awe”.
Another important early influence would be something completely different and almost the opposite of the Saturday Evening Post. “My Dad used to bring home little advertising booklets, some I remember printed with illustrations by Leroy Neiman (b.1921) in bright vivid beautiful colors. They made me think of using color differently than the way Wyeth utilized color to achieve earth tones or Rockwell applied color to give people rosy cheeks. Later, as I was older, I attempted a lot of things in a Leroy Neiman style that were so strong and so bold that it just did not work because people in Nebraska were so conservative. I was so affected at the time by what people said, so I put it aside and liked it myself.” When Ruth Glenn Little looks at Leroy Neiman’s artwork she finds the power of a stroke. “Even though he mainly works in oil I work in I watercolor, when you make a brush stroke and pick-up maybe one or two colors on your brush melting colors together, it creates a nuance that is different than hard line painting. To see how he created the stability in his color contrast, the flow, and abstracted images, his stroke just makes sense. I get excitement and color vibration from his painting with its pattern flow, and splashing color in the action of his subjects.”
“Perhaps my first influence in art was when we would go visit my aunt, Freda Lawson. The artwork portraying the Mother Goose Rhymes or those wonderfully illustrated children’s books by Beatrix Potter (1866 – 1943) were probably one of the strongest influences I remember. As a child I didn’t know that I couldn’t really see very well, it wasn’t until I was around 11 that one of my school teachers realized that I needed glasses, consequently, I would tend to work close-up because that became a familiar way to observe things as I taught myself to do my artwork. I would also draw Walt Disney characters. As a teenager I started drawing fashion models from magazines with their fancy clothes. That is when I stopped drawing altogether because my eighth grade teacher commented on my drawing of Archie and Katie Keene characters and magazine models. He became really upset and said ‘Nice girls don’t draw things like that. Nice girls just do not draw.’ And I stopped. I do not know if it was because I was drawing women or models or what. I did not draw again until I was a senior in high school. I started drawing line drawings of people to illustrate a Home-Economics project. Once I started drawing again I couldn’t stop.”
About two years after getting married, just out of High School, and having a son who at the time was about a year old, the young Lewin family found themselves in need of a new car, and Ruth’s parents went along to help car shop with them. The Dodge dealer had a big sign out and it read “Artist will do a free portrait of someone in your family if you buy a new car”. Ruth remembers that she told her husband “I don’t care what car you buy but this is where we are buying the car.” I had never seen an artist at work. How can he do a whole portrait kept running through my mind....My son still has that portrait. My mother said she would hold Bobby so that I could watch the artist work. He was using pastels and I never knew there was such a thing. It just started to appear on the paper and I was astonished. He drew my little boy. I was mesmerized. It was finished in an hour and a half or two hours. I guess my mother had been watching me while I watched the artist.” On the trip back home Ruth was really quiet and did not talk, her mother finally asked “What did you think?” All Ruth said was “I can do that”. This was in Feb or March and her mother bought Ruth her first set of pastels and velour papers for her birthday that May. “I learned then, that there was something beyond Crayolas. I did not understand the process of color building and I began to learn how to blend with pastels. A year or so later my mother bought me a basic tube set of acrylic paints, brushes and canvas tablets. It was a sort of naïve ground breaking period for me and my first experience with color theory and mixing.”
Competition & Governor's Award
In 1965 Tom Berger an art instructor from Scottsbluff taught a six-week oil painting class at the Hay Springs Library. The course started with basic principles like how to make all the colors from mixing just 3 colors. Her first painting was of a log cabin in the snow. The instructor told her that it was worth framing and he wanted to take it and have it framed. He kept it for several weeks and when he brought it back it was framed and it had a ribbon on it! Berger had entered it in a competition. “I was so upset. I cried and cried. He had shown my painting to be judged without my knowledge. It was the first thing I did in class. I was not ready for that. It was my first oil painting. He was shocked at my reaction; he thought I would be happy. He somewhat lost my trust but I still wanted to keep painting with him.”
Between raising four boys and the daily grind of physically demanding farm chores, Ruth juggled time to paint and entered a painting of a pheasant in the North Platte Five State Art Show in 1972 winning 3rd place. The painting was selected to hang at the Governor's Mansion with other Nebraska artists for six months and toured for another six months with an exhibit of Art of the Mid-Western States. With a Governor’s Award came an invitation to go to the Governor’s mansion for the show but her husband and his family, wanting Ruth to conform to their typical duties of a housewife, were still not supportive of her success. Pursuing an interest in the field of art was met with controversy and suspicion and Ruth was considered by her in-laws to be self-centered and irresponsible. Needless to say, it was impossible for Ruth to accept the Governor’s invitation. Ruth’s passion for art somehow prevailed despite the many years her first marriage discouraged her early artistic endeavors. Having to constantly defend her accomplishments only added to the atmosphere of frustration and anxiety and the success of her artwork provided her only condolence. There were so many episodes that would have been considered the final blow by most but for Ruth the final blow was no longer important. Eventually there was little choice but to take the children and leave.
“What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way”.
- Winslow Homer
Another illustrator that became influential to Ruth was Winslow Homer (1836-1910), not just because of his art, but his attitude and ideology toward higher education. Ruth was impressed that his determination to paint, to be an artist, hugely eclipsed his well documented lack of education and formal training. After separating from her husband in 1973, Ruth wanted to go to college and learn to become an artist. She went to Western Nebraska Community College and took some art classes. “Remembering something I read by Winslow Homer, I learned that college is not going to teach me how to be an artist; painting will teach me how to be an artist. After a few classes I realized they could not teach me how to be who I am.” Curious about what she was learning in class, Ruth asked one of her art instructors, “After I go to school for four years, what I will have as an artist?” “Nothing, you will have a degree that will allow you to teach” he replied. Ruth answered, “I do not want to teach; I want to be an artist.” Ironically she would eventually do both, without the four year degree. One insightful instructor, Paul Doufluer, organized a group of 5 students, including Ruth, to visit the Denver Art Museum. “I was 30, it was the first time I had been to an Art Museum and the first time I had seen original paintings by important artists. It was an incredible experience, Vincent Van Gogh (1853 – 1890), Claude Monet (1840-1926), the impact was incredible – I was aware to some degree of some of the names especially Van Gogh from a used book my father had given me, but to see them in person was amazing; I didn’t know what to do with all that information. When you got up close to the paintings, there was nothing but color. I didn’t know how to break down what I was experiencing and relate it to what I wanted in my life and work as an artist.”
Greeley, Colorado & RLD Design
Her divorce was finalized by the time she finished the school semester. Ruth wanted to move to Seattle because she thought there might be more opportunity to take care of her children and to make it on her own. Her idea was to possibly start an interior design business. Family members convinced her that Seattle was much too far away so instead she moved to Greeley, Colorado. The employment agencies were no help, considering her as unemployable, so she secured a job on her own selling wall paper, paint and art supplies. From that job she moved on to work for Sherwin Williams and into the position of regional decorator. Based on the work experience she had gained as the regional interior decorator for Sherwin Williams, Ruth felt that the time was right to start her own interior decorator supplier business. That was the beginning of Ruth Lewin Design. In a few short years RLD had grown to10 employees and 27 contractors and at the age of 38 Ruth had a heart attack. Her doctor convinced Ruth that the pressures from child custody issues and running the business had to end. “In 1979 I sold the business to my accountant and left to join my sister DeAnn Glenn in Jakarta, Indonesia just a few months later. My sister was there traveling originally and then she started working there and eventually was married. My sister’s husband negotiated a work visa for me so I lived there for 2 ½ years with my two younger sons aged 11 and 8.” Ruth first worked as a creative animation director, designing animated characters for TV commercials. She completed her first commercial when the government decided to take commercials off the air. She then worked for a batik company decorating the embassy and lavish homes usually owned by foreigners and worked for another batik company designing a clothing line and the color palette for their batik fabrics. Ruth also did catalog lay outs for a trade-fair company (her sister was part-owner).
In 1982, not ready to return to the US, she went to Australia to consider a job offer. The job did not work out so Ruth stayed there on a visitor visa for a year. During that year she volunteered at a Youth Adult Bureau to work with street kids and their art. She developed a program for them to assemble an art portfolio and present it to a potential employer. While in the process of developing the program, Ruth accidentally discovered additional employment. The art director of the largest greeting card company in Australia, Valentine Greetings, looked at her portfolio and offered her a job to create wrapping paper and greeting card designs. After she set up the program for the young artists, two of the artists were working within 6 months, one designing greeting cards and one creating a cartoon for the Sydney Sun. It was now 1983 and her visa was about to run out. The town of Black Forest offered her a job to immigrate to Australia and a housing allotment to buy a house. Ruth temporarily moved to New Zealand while waiting for the immigration paperwork. Everything looked to be in order but her ex-husband would not sign the papers allowing her two sons to move with her to Australia. The visa expired.
Moving to Hawaii was a logical alternative to Australia, since her brother, Douglas Glenn, was living there working as a goldsmith. Shortly after the move in 1983, Ruth met and married Jim Little (Olympic Coach for wheelchair athletes and professor at the University of Hawaii). After a whirlwind courtship they were off to Guam for a 2 year project with a UH grant where Jim was to set-up satellite training centers for special education students. This became a very productive time in Ruth’s life. She was involved in numerous projects, was very prolific, and sold a great deal of her art work. She enjoyed and benefited from the refreshing positive support from her second husband. She began showing at art fairs. The Department of Education of Guam asked her to teach art in the Gifted and Talented Program. Ruth started teaching watercolor classes in her home studio and opened an art gallery Colorful Creations with five other artists, had two completely sold out one man exhibits, and painted commissioned works.
When she returned to Hawaii in1985 she was still working on a commission for a U.S. government funded program through the U.S. Public Health Service of Guam (Div. of Maternal Child Health Care), to illustrate two books Fun And Games With Your Special Baby (1985) and Fun And Games With Your Special Toddler (1986). That same year she also taught watercolor with the UH continuing education program on campus and private lessons in her home studio. Between the years 1985 – 1994 living in Hawaii, Ruth constantly kept her paint brushes wet with a number of one man shows and group shows, sometimes showing with her students. Her largest solo show in Hawaii was in 1987 at the Pauahi Tower Gallery located in the main foyer of the 28 story high-rise Pauahi Tower office building in downtown Honolulu. She was very active in competitions and exhibitions with the Hawaii Watercolor Society and the Association of Hawaii Artists. Ruth exhibited paintings at the Art Gallery at Halekolani Hotel and Elephant Walk Galleries on Oahu and Kauai. She designed a line of T-shirts that were very popular and sold well for Elephant Walk Gallery and the Bishop Museum (State Museum of Natural and Cultural History, Honolulu, Hawaii). In 1991 the art of Ruth Glenn Little was published in the magazine Wild Life Art and she began selling paintings with Waipio Valley Artworks, a working relationship that continues today.
Yap, Federated States of Micronesia
Earlier, while living in Guam, a mix up at the Post office with the wrong film and a set of pictures had introduced Ruth to Yap in 1984. After seeing the incredibly pristine beauty of the island in the photos she felt drawn to go there and paint. “It took me 7 years to get there but this was something I was determined to do”. After moving to Hawaii Ruth finally took an opportunity to visit Yap with another artist and paint for 2 weeks. There were only 6 taxis on the island. ”We would use taxis to get to the locations to paint”. The trip to Yap produced paintings that would eventually be sold in Hawaii. An additional painting excursion followed again in 1992 producing 90 paintings in 30 days. With the accumulation of about 125 paintings, Ruth began showing the paintings and lecturing on Yap. The Foster Garden Gallery had a solo exhibit of the Yap paintings. Holomalahia Botanical Gardens also had a show and Ruth did a presentation on the Island of Yap and showed her work at Arts of Paradise at the Waikiki Market Place. The trip to Yap in ’94 resulted in a confirmed desire to move there. Each trip Ruth gained a growing familiarity with the people and she instantly felt accepted from the very first trip. she felt safe and protected because of the people’s attitude of acceptance toward her. It was her second visit that she noticed the police captain constantly there in the background keeping a vigil over her when she went out in public or out to paint. Ruth felt an unexplainable special kinsmanship to these people. “I was absorbed by Yap”.
“In 1993 my husband decided to take a sabbatical and take advantage of the offer to go to Colorado Springs to work with the Olympic athletes. This was a great opportunity for him. By this time we had been deciding to end the marriage and we settled on selling the house and going our separate ways. I decided to stay in Hawaii moving to the Big Island where my brother lived.” It was during this time Ruth revisited Yap. Her career was going well but she felt no strong ties to Hawaii. Her husband had moved and her children were adults pursuing their own lives by now. After visiting Yap again, Ruth informed her family in the States that she decided to move to Yap, where she spent her next seven years.
“I started painting and had a few private students. I worked with a particularly talented student named Tommy Tamagmed who according to his school counselor wanted to be an artist. I had written a watercolor workbook to teach with in 1986 and self-published 200 copies to use in my UH watercolor class. Tommy used the book and created illustrations for every exercise. He was amazing, he was so diligent, if he didn’t do them perfectly he would keep working on it. The school was impressed with his progress not only in art but in his new found interest in learning English and math skills.”
“In 1996 the Department of Education for the state of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia asked if I would work on a three-year joint project teaching 8 students (two young men from each language group of Yap) to be illustrators based on the surprising results from the last two years with Tommy. I agreed only if a gallery space was included to sell their work and studio space was provided away from the school to teach them. They were all different ages. Tommy was the youngest but he also became my assistant. They all learned how to paint and sell their work, pay the gallery a commission, and how to manage their money. The project was to publish books about local culture printed in the local languages. There were four linguists working to solidify the languages in written form starting with the alphabet. My students illustrated the alphabets of each language and alphabet cards were placed in all the schools. The educators then wrote the books and my students supplied the illustrations. The Department of Education sent me to Hong Kong to proof the layout and supervise the printing. It was the first time that textbooks in their own languages and relative to their culture were ever available in the schools.” Due to the success and interest in the project Ruth was featured in the publication Pacific Below 1997 in an article titled Ruth Glenn Little, Shaper of Island Talent, that told in detail of her fruitful program on the Island of Yap. Her artwork was also published in Pacific News 1998, and Islands Magazine 1998.
Draw Now
Ruth had extended her five year permit twice because of her work with the DOE but when it was finished it was time to go. “It was hard to leave but I felt that what I had started was finished and my mother was turning 80 and my nieces were getting married and I thought well, it is time to go home.” She spent five months in Australia visiting her sister, DeAnn, and worked on writing and illustrating her own drawing book titled DRAW NOW. She felt a definite need for an instructional book just on drawing to use in her classes before watercolor could be approached. Ruth, taught by experience, understands how essential teaching the basics are to her students. It was submitted to North Light Publishing in 2001 and released in 2005 and is now in its third printing. Ruth purchased a round the world ticket and headed for Parachute, Colorado to visit her mother and help with the nieces’ weddings. The original plan was to return to Australia on September 26th, 2001 but 9-11 happened and plans changed. “My mother said ‘Don’t get on the plane’ and I didn’t.”
Ruth started applying for teaching jobs in Grand Junction, and quickly secured positions with Western Colorado Art Center, Colorado Mt. College, and Mesa State UTEC. She lived in Parachute with her mom for a year and a half until her son came out of the military and wanted to enter culinary school in Grand Junction; the two became housemates and rented a house there. Ruth observed that after some time in Colorado she painted more of the local indigenous wildlife. “I did more pencil drawings in Colorado than I did anywhere else”. Her work was accepted into the top 100 National Arts for the Parks. Earth tones became more prominent and she painted less with the bright colors of the islands. “My limited palette had still basically stayed the same for the past 20 years." In 2005 she became the Artist in Residence at New Emerson Elementary School, in Orchard Mesa. It is a program she remains involved in today. She also maintains a very strong student base in Colorado working with students who started out as real beginners and have now gone on to compete and win awards.
Seattle Art Scene
“By 2006 my son had completed culinary school wanted to accept an executive chef position in Seattle and since I had been trying to go there since 1973 I was all for it”. Ruth finally kept her date with the beckoning Seattle art scene. Finding herself in this new contemporary art environment has been a catalyst for even more creativity. “I think I found where I want to stay, I like the diversity of the landscape and the weather. There are days that the landscape already looks like a watercolor. I am painting things I never even thought of painting, it is exciting.”
In the past Ruth would often sketch preliminary rough drafts and ideas before making the final paintings or drawings. “But today, my sketch books are more like think tanks with ideas and thoughts that only I would understand as to how they apply to the actual painting, and I now work with a full palette.”
In this latest phase in her development Little is negotiating her way between the strong inspirational ties to the people of Yap that resulted in representational paintings and the newly incorporated abstract or contemporary style seen today influencing her work. “I want to show other people what I see, because I want them to see the forms, I want them to see the shapes I want them to see and feel the volume. I want the viewer to understand that the colors, the movements, the patterns, and the combinations are fascinating to me and I want people to experience it as well.”
Making her art count for something is also a big motivator: “My number one inspiration had been to paint animals but after Yap I focused on the Yapese people. Then it became the experience with Yap. If I had to choose the strongest, most, extremely inspiring, dramatic impact in my life - that would be Yap. It is the most positive, the most gratifying thing I ever could have done, and it had a positive affect on a lot of people. From the first time I went there in 1991, helping bring the people of Yap into their own awareness was something really important to me. Being a part of the process that helped them acknowledge their culture, accept their culture, and appreciate their culture, also gave me something personally, just as important. Then to expose others outside of Yap to this awareness, it became even more powerful and it is still something that is with me today.”
A diverse artist, Ruth has found success in several different styles. “I am now trying to limit my work style to the venue I am showing in – I think people can get confused with so many styles. I am prolific – that is what I do, I paint. They are identifiable styles – people identify me with those styles in different locations – my batik style is a sort of merge of both the representational and the abstract.”
Ruth is inspired to paint the subjects around her wherever she is - colors, flowers, wildlife, or people. “I paint to encourage a viewer to notice, enjoy and respond to their environment.” In the Seattle art market where color, abstract, and contemporary is king, “it has been interesting to have people respond to my new series of non-representational paintings that express my emotional statement. It is encouraging. Even though my collectors might not instantly associate the art with me, I feel like these paintings have a play of color, a flow, and a composition that are still mine. They have many things that I am happy about. I have gotten a lot of good response. I feel a sense of accomplishment if a viewer becomes more aware and in tune with their surroundings because of what I have painted.”
“I like the spontaneity of watercolor. I am currently using Daniel Smith Paints – the watercolor line is so inspiring and so exciting. The paints I work with have to perform - the color, the purity, the mix-ability, the flow, everything I strive for in producing the strokes. I like to manipulate the strokes, the layers, and the water so they fuse together in a way that the patterns and colors show through - it is an exciting part of my work. I don’t feel like I have continuity, I have paintings. Everything I do with my artwork has to send me one step higher to that continuity. I feel I am in a building process – one step higher does not mean something completely different it is just a progression of refining my work. I have come to realize that I feel somewhat protected (guarded) with the subject matter I have painted in the past. I have painted realistic animals, florals and children themes and would avoid anything that allows anyone to see me or what might have been involved in my life. I have not allowed people to know who I was through my art. It has been more or less a shell I have built around myself for self-preservation.”
A recent opportunity to hear textile artist Anita Mayer speak at the La Conner Textile & Quilt Museum gave Little a reason to pause and reflect on her own past... “To hear her speak so openly about the reality she had to face, and the mistakes she made and how she made light of them so she could go on, has had an impact on me. It has given me more encouragement and confidence to pursue my artwork without the approval of others. My mother was raised Holland Dutch Reform and she would not allow me to wear red until high school. I could not have finger nail polish or lipstick that was red. As much as my mother encouraged my art with supplies and her continuous support, other aspects of her raising me are still an underlying influence in my work; but I think it has made me stronger, at times rebellious, and helped me want to live my own life and find my own way.”
© 2008 Appraisalink
Biography may be reproduced in whole or in part with proper credit.
This biography is based on a series of interviews, June - July 2008, with the artist
by Mark & Haydee Allred of Appraisalink.net