Ruth Murray

Contemporary painter, Manchester, UK

About the Artist

Ruth Murray is a figurative painter working in a realist style. Her paintings are about the experiences of women and most of her paintings are of women in a scene. Sometimes these women evoke feelings of alienation and paranoia, or explore issues around one’s self-conception or social position. There is a tense feeling to some of these paintings, but they also look to the quiet beauty in mourning or isolation, so there can be a kind of languorous, contemplative aspect to them as well. At other times, instead of flatness, or emptiness, the yearning in the paintings comes out as fizzling desire and bubbling anger. In all of this Murray is working against traditional depictions of women in nature and domestic settings - she loads her scenes with psychological content, even if that makes them less comfortable than one would expect from a painting of a woman sitting in her front room.

​

Ruth has received numerous prizes and awards for her paintings. She was overall winner in the 2020 Jackson’s Painting Prize and was shortlisted for the 2019 Contemporary British Painting Prize. Other notable exhibitions and awards include Northern Stars at the A Foundation, Saatchi's 4 New Sensations, the BP Portrait Award, the Threadneedle Figurative Art Prize and the Creative Cities Collection at the Barbican Exhibition Halls. She graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2008. 

​

Recent Exhibitions

2020/2021: New Light Art Prize, touring exhibition to Scarborough Art Gallery, Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, The Biscuit Factory, Newcastle, and Bankside Gallery, London
2020: BEEP Painting Prize (part of BEEP Painting Biennial), Elysium Gallery, Swansea, Wales
2019: Contemporary British Painting Prize, Huddersfield Art Gallery, Huddersfield
2019: Second Nature, The Portico Library, Manchester
2019: The Blue Hour (solo), The Old Bank Residency, Manchester
2019: Under British Skies, Chapel Gallery, Ormskirk, Lancashire
2019: Good Morning, Midnight! (solo), Elysium Gallery, Swansea, Wales
2019: PAINT, PS Mirabel, Manchester
2019: MICRO, AIR Gallery, Altrincham
2019: Portray / Portrait, PS Mirabel, Manchester

 

​

Awards 

Jacksons Painting Prize Winner 2020
Contemporary British Painting Prize shortlist 2019
The Surgeons Prize, RBA Annual Exhibition 2018
RBA Rome Scholarship finalist 2018
People’s Prize Winner, BEEP Wales 2014

Teddy Smith Award 2011
Petrov Prize 2009
Sheldon Bergh Award 2008
Boundary Figurative Art Prize 2008
De Laszlo Prize 2008
Derek Hill Scholarship, British School at Rome (Oct - Dec) 2008
Stanley-Smith Scholarship, Royal College of Art 2006 - 2007
Astra Zeneca Purchase Prize 2006

Alan Quiney Award 2004 & 2005