Claudie McGuire Ruby, collagiste

Claudie McGuire Ruby is what is called in French an undisciplined artist, and she loves the term even more so than an outsider artist ... unruly, disobedient ... having to create her own signature without the imprint of a teacher, all a matter, a discovery, of her own choice.

She was born and educated in France, in Paris; her father, Robert Sterkers was a trained artist whose forte was engraving and watercolor, her mother a concert level pianist. Only much later on, when she was living in Los Angeles did she become an artist,; not really realizing what she was doing until the late JAN STUSSY, artist and art professor at UCLA, discovered what she had on the walls of her sewing room and said "Who does this, THIS IS ART!!!" He never told her to go to art school but only WORK ... and this is the result of those words.... and the gift of confidence given to her at her first steps, an incredible gift as at the same time her then husband was saying, seeing her cutting thousands of flowers or eyes or whatever: this is an obsession, you belong at Camarillo! That was many years ago.

Without knowing it, instinctively she had found a way to express herself, and created a visual diary ... and a surrealistic one from the start, having seen several times a very important show in Los Angeles on SURREALISM which literally blew her mind: this was her language ... WHY collage has been her media? Maybe an offshoot of her sewing where she was an expert, again creating without patterns, just following the feel of a fabric ... with great enjoyment and success. Juxtapositions in an illusionist space, evocative Images, metaphors sometimes simplistic, sometimes part of her past, expressions of beauty and at times of great sadness, symbolic ambiguity ... poetic imagery and suggestions of very serious concerns (overpopulation, losses, passing of time, sexuality, sorrows ... then came 9/11, the war ... and extensive traveling when the artist does not take notes or photos, knowing it will all come out when she returns home and it does! ALL THESE sources are in her kaleidoscopic creations.

"How does it start?" is a question so often asked ... Well, it can be a color, a shape, a WORD, an event whose poignancy is such that it helps her to deal with it, whatever it is, is so often just a small part of the creative process which the artist is the first one to enjoy the mystery of the development, unplanned by her. There in lies the JOY.

She works on black cardboard at first, then Masonite, many different sizes (one took the artist 2 years to finish and at the end she was ready to take a hatchet to it!! She has gone into ARTISTS books (one of a kind) a suggestion given to her by the late archivist of Massachusetts. JEAN BROWN. One of Claudie's books is in the Jean Brown archive in the Getty Research Institute at the Getty.
A printed book, a very limited edition completely sold out and when digital prints came to her awareness, large posters of her work went to Paris. Much passion, much energy has gone into her work, we wish more of that energy would have gone into ambition; four shows in Los Angeles, one in Taos, one in San Francisco, in Newport Beach ... many of her works are in the hands of private collectors.

Before us is a selection, examples of her work.