Ru Knox is an English artist who had an extensive classical training at one of the most prestigious ateliers in the world. He has spent years as a professional classical portraitist, fulfilling private commissions and exhibiting both in the UK and abroad and he has had much success in international competitions. He is currently exhibiting in London galleries whilst working towards an MA in Fine Art at City and Guilds. Ru combines rigorous formal structure with his own original ideas, displaying his unique and personal style. His abstract works have developed from pure traditional representation to a more contemporary approach but retain references to his extensive classical training at one of the most prestigious ateliers in the world. Ru’s raw imagery renders a deeply sculptural yet intangible quality especially when his work is viewed in ‘real-life’. These processes achieve both a synergy and a tension between fine intricate draughtsmanship and sheer abstraction, forming a dynamic and lifting conversation between creator and spectator. His large paintings hang poised between a spatial world of depth and form populated with suggested characters that hint at untold narratives that have an immediate confrontation with the raw materiality of painting. The paint has been blended and scrubbed in some areas, left to trickle and bleed in others, built up and scraped back again laboriously, in forceful pursuit of the final effect.
The artist explains his inspiration: "These paintings are immersive environments, designed to encourage an optimal creative experience. The ambiguous shapes and forms, which are expressed with vibrant colours and painterly techniques, invite the viewer to create a subjective narrative, based upon their own collection of thoughts and memories. The overall effect is a sense of harmony and dissonance, cadence and rhythm, focus and disorientation. Acquiring these visual cues the viewer's role moves from the acquiescent and into the realm of creation as they are invited to stimulate their own rapturous sensation".