Ruth Swain

About the artist

Ruth Swain is an award-winning portrait, figurative and still-life artist based in Oxfordshire. She works in oil, watercolour and pastel. Her large-scale images not only tell a story, but they show the emotional bond between subject and sitter.

Swain graduated from the Art Academy London in December 2020.  She previously worked in London, Hong Kong and New York as an advertising art director and illustrator. She brings this influence into her paintings by using visual ideas, twists and humour to enhance her work. She is also a member of the Oxford Art Society.

Her recent achievements include winning The Readers Award in Artists and Illustrators magazine (Artist of the year 2017) and exhibiting in exhibitions such as the RBSA open exhibition 2017, OAS open in 2018, 2019 and 2020 and The RIPW exhibition 2019. Her painting ‘Essentials’ is on show in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

Swain has also been shortlisted for The Signature Art Prize and will also be exhibiting in the ‘For Women, By Women’ exhibition taking place over International Women’s Day in March 2021.

Swain is currently exploring the idea of Still-Life as a form of portraiture and focusing on women’s lives today. She wants to make their often-invisible work more visible by elevating the ordinary and mundane and find beauty in the minutiae of everyday life. 

“I refuse to be invisible. I am a 50 something woman, an artist and I  paint. It’s what I do. There are people and objects out there that go unnoticed, I want to make you see them. Their everyday beauty that we take for granted, I want to elevate their status to portray them in a new light.”