Ruth Mittelholtz

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Ruth Mittelholtz of Chesley works in drawing and photo-based media and has exhibited in group and solo shows in Toronto and the Grey Bruce area. She has exhibited in juried shows including the Annual Juried Show at the Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery in Owen Sound in 2005 (Waves 4 and 5,) 2004, and 2003, and won awards including First Prize in the Photography category at the Walkerton Library Juried Show in April 2006, Third Prize in the Fourth Annual Drawing Exhibition at the John B. Aird Gallery in Toronto in 2003, and Honourable Mention for Drawing at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibition in 1998. She showed images from her series of close-range digital photographs of waves in solo shows at the Durham Art Gallery in 2005 (The Dance of the Waves,) and in Toronto in 2006 at Gallery 1313 as part of the CONTACT photography festival.

Artist’s Statement

The moving water is a canvas on which light paints in colours of emerald, sapphire, and deepest ultramarine. In this series of digital prints based on close-range photographs of Georgian Bay at Indian Head Cove in Bruce Peninsula National Park, I set out to record the fleeting compositions created by the dance of the waves and the flash of the sunlight. Using a digital camera, a computer graphics program to give nature a nudge, and pigment-based inks, I have produced a series of digital (giclée) prints to try to reveal some of the infinite number of ephemeral colour and shape configurations that unfold from moment to moment.

I am fascinated by water, and have used it as subject material for some time in drawing and photo-based works. Water has strong symbolic and metaphoric meanings but in this portfolio of wave photographs I am interested primarily in taking a close look at the appearance of moving water, specifically that of Georgian Bay, so notably transparent and intense in its colours.

I was first prompted to take photographs of the surface of Georgian Bay when I found myself entranced by the hypnotic swirl and sway of the waves along the rocky coast. I tried to catch with my camera the movement of the waves and their beauty and power. When I viewed my images, I discovered compositions that were too fleeting to observe readily in the waves themselves, and I began to search for likely locations of these transitory designs of nature. Indian Head Cove with its cliffs, submerged rocks, ledges, and great depth, all within a very small area, proved to be the most productive for images, and it also happens to be one of the most beautiful spots in the Bruce Peninsula.

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