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The hills are alive-as are the plains, the valleys, the seas, the skies and all things that issue from them. At least, that's what Ambika Gail Rutherford's art seems to tell us. Her paintings and prints celebrate life and landscape, often through goddesses and spirits who embody various aspects of the natural world.
"I use a human image," Rutherford explains, "a female body, to express [the fact] that we are part of the world around us. We are part of the whole of creation."
Rutherford's original place in creation was 1930s Australia. Born and educated there, she has lived and worked in Spain, England and the U.S.A., finally settling in Prince Edward Island, Canada. She has done multiple group exhibitions and one-woman shows in all of these countries over the years.
Wherever she lived, the art was there. "I just always did it," she shrugs. "I drew all over my schoolbooks, I drew constantly, all over everything." Thanks to supportive parents and her own determination, Rutherford parlayed this artistic drive into an artistic career, at times living off the sale of her paintings alone. These days, she has the additional cushion of a teaching pension and various investments. "It's not easy," she says, "but I've managed. I've been very lucky."
Rutherford's Australian origins have influenced her environmental outlook, including her admiration for such native peoples as Australia's Aborigines. "Their lives are [dedicated] to keeping guard over the land," she says, "not exploiting it. It's awful what European races have done to them."
Rutherford is disturbed by the materialistic, consumer mentality of western civilization. "We need to change our thinking," she says. "We're constantly bombarded with [consumerism]. I fell into it when I was teaching, and I was really pushing [my daughter] to get a degree. It's a cultural push."
This competitive, consumptive mind-set is, she believes, an outgrowth of a largely patriarchal culture. "I'm female," she says, "and I do think of Gaea [the Earth deity] as feminine, and I think there's not enough respect for the feminine. I think we're equal peoples, but [patriarchy] is one-sided and destructive.
"Feminine has stood for working with nature," she explains, "nurturing, seeing the world as a whole, not just grabbing and destroying." Citing the constant competitive pressures of our society, Rutherford adds, "I'd hate to be male in this culture."
Gender issues aside, Rutherford's watercolours display an obvious love of the land. "[Island landscape] is very involved with light and colour," she says, "and to get that depth...I use the watercolour."
When creating her archetypal nature figures, Rutherford usually does them as colour prints or drawings. "I really enjoy the printmaking," she says, "because I love to draw." These amorphous, spiritual characters are a limitless outlet for creative design.
Some of Rutherford's subjects arose from meditation, though she no longer claims this ability. Still, her art is informed by such diverse sources as Native American mysticism, Buddhism and Jung. "It is spiritual," she says of her art, and no one familiar with the lyrical organicism of her work would dispute that.