RUTH TODD Colorado Signed Framed Abstract CATHEDRAL FOREST Watercolor Painting

Colorado artist Ruth Thomas Todd (1909-2006), abstract watercolor painting on arches paper, Cathedral Forest. Signed at lower right. Simple frame measures 17 1/2" x 23", painting measures 11 1/2" x 17".

Bio Courtesy of the Kirkland Museum: 

Ruth Thomas Todd was born on November 10, 1909 in Sanford, North Carolina. She arrived in New York City in the 1930s where she began her career as a fashion model. She was diagnosed with tuberculosis and relocated to Colorado Springs to treat her condition. During her recuperation she started to draw and studied under famous American painter Robert Motherwell, who was teaching at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at the time. By the 1950s, her career as an abstract expressionist painter was blooming. She was one of Colorado’s most visible and avant-garde artists. Ruth married Littleton Todd, a poet and a woodworker who owned Todd Manufacturing. He aided her explorations of textures by bringing home sacks of sawdust and other materials for Ruth to use. She would incorporate sawdust and other found materials imbued with oil paint into her work to create unique topographies and patterns. During her lifetime Todd was featured in New York City’s Morris Gallery and Bodley Gallery, as well as Sandra Phillips Gallery in Denver. She continued to paint and collage in her home-studio on Kearney Street up until her death at age 96.

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