Tonight Painters Under Pressure, my SPA salon, met at the studio of Ruth Hesse. In addition to being talented printmakers and artists this group of 7 is rousingly funny and has an appreciation for food and politics, both of which take up at least some part of our monthly meetings before we get to the central business of sharing and critiquing our work. I will be doing a detailed profile on the salon at a later time.

This post is an alert to those who may not have heard that Ruth is having her fabulous annual print sale this weekend. Ruth’s East Magnolia studio is tucked into a marine area in view of the water and a dazzling maze of industrial stuff. I’ve got to go back in the daylight. This is an area I have never been to and it seems like a whole mysterious city-behind-the-city that I had never known existed. You can get a map and directions to the studio here. The sale will be from 2-6 on Sunday February 26th, with prices ranging from $35 to $1,000. Below, some quick cellphone snaps of her work and space.

See more of Ruth Hesse’s work at her website.

“Often, my prints live in my To Be Continued folder, where they germinate until I have the right combination of colors and textures to layer on top of them. I live for the moment when discordant elements come together to make something unpredictable and beautiful.  That’s what excites me about monotype.

Life is a layering of experiences, be they planned, spontaneous, embarrassing, proud, painful or sublime.  Without that layering, there’s no depth.  There’s great hope in accepting the difficult stages in life (or the life of a print), placing faith in the process that everything will turn out okay in the end.” –R. Hesse