I use painting as a full-bodied process to record my body’s movement while experimenting with the illusion of depth and space. The intimacy and urgency of touch is integral to my work. I paint with my hands and feet, often sliding across the canvas to archive a moment of physical release. In this way, work questions the order of thought, where dance-like, active engagement with painting leads my conversation with an image and its surface history. I test colours directly on my skin, my fingers flutter through paint to suggest the weightlessness of waves, and scratch marks reveal illuminating raw canvas. Over several weeks, I blend painting, drawing, and sculpting techniques in charcoal, clay, acrylic, rock, and sand. I walk all over my work, spit on it, scratch it, sleep with it, cry with it, bleed into it. With time, space reveals itself, so I care for and cultivate this illusion of depth like a fossilized piece of my body and its natural imperfections. However, the work is never fully finished. Clay and paint peel gently from the surface like shedding skin, so the painting remains active and alive even after the completion of the painting process.

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I'm a Canadian, London-based artist and MA Painting student at the Royal College of Art. I recently graduated from the Graduate Diploma in Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, and completed a BA with High Distinction in Art History, Diaspora Studies, and Spanish at the University of Toronto in 2024, during which I studied for a year at Université Grenoble-Alpes. 

 

My work is held in private collections in Toronto and Paris. For purchase inquiries, please email ruarimilne@gmail.com

 

You may also follow my work on Instagram