Ruth LizBeth Poor

Visual Art – Indianapolis

Ruth LizBeth Poor, a native of the Midwest and graduate from Cornell College and DePauw University, is a contemporary artist working primarily with oil and canvas to create these ‘compilations of self-identified habits’. Her work ranges from surreal compilations of dancers transplanted in uneasy environments to objectified and abstracted forms of the body. By converting this exchange into a microcosm of a “self,” Ruth’s work addresses ideas of conflict with one’s own body and internal processes. Some of these forms presented are composed with layers of tissue, muscle, fat, and selected viscera; others are surreal replications of the female body interacting with similar forms and foreign figures. In the creation of these images, the figure as a whole is essentially erased, leaving the remains of unidentifiable and innumerable human/animal parts and remains to interact with their immediate surroundings and occasionally other “bodies”. The forms are placed specifically within geometric and structured environments as an idea of control—the control of the environment upon the forms and their reaction to them. The conditions constructed by these geometric means are done so because they are artificially crafted by human hands.