Ruth Burgess

The forest in which I live has been the symbolic material for my work as a woodcut artist for over 40 years. I work on large-scale woodcuts with vigorous cutting and multi-block, multi-coloured imagery. In recent years I have made over 50 wood engravings that explore the same imagery on a smaller scale. Travelling to China on nine visits of cultural exchange greatly influenced my approach to landscape where Chinese painting and calligraphy and Buddhist traditions developed my approach to the forest which became increasingly a spiritual source. In 2013 Mosman Regional Gallery held a major retrospective of my work From the Forest, the most recent of numerous solo and group exhibitions. My work has been collected by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, National Gallery of Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, Sydney University Collection and numerous other collections.