Sarah Ruthven abstracts the landscape with colour. She is drawn to wild places like the west coast of Cornwall, the Sussex cost line and the undulating and expansive South Downs, saying, ‘the play of shifting light, textures and atmospheres create a landscape which is deep, living and breathing.’ These landscapes inspire Ruthven’s ceramic and painting practice, which feed into each other. Oil paints, palettes, slips and glazes all retain the flowing and malleable landscape she experiences. Ruthven will visit the same spots repeatedly. As an energy healer, She tunes into her surroundings, sensing the history of place: the stories of animals, people and earth.  Once she finds a place she feels connected to, Ruthven begins to paint. Working en plein air, connecting with the land and  then begins to mix her colours. These colours are a response to Ruthven’s emotive and sensuous experience: the smell of sea air, the sound of the wind. She is engaging with what is physically in front of her and something deeper. The vibrations of past lives and geological history flows through her, these frequencies prompting specific tones. These experiences will also feed into her ceramic practice, the clay shifting under her hands as she immerses herself in memories of the land.  With her work, Sarah communicates her experience of the landscape. Abstracted, hazy and luminous these lyrical paintings are sensitive invitations into land and light. Sarah says, ‘working in the landscape, I feel like there is this human yearning to reconnect and remember. In a world of digital interference, it’s what we need to reconnect with our soul: the landscape brings us home.’ These paintings emphasise visually the  importance and desire to protect our oceans and countryside.