Slide Scanning Complete

I just got back a set of over five hundred slides that I had scanned.  There is a great variety of different periods and styles.  There are paintings that I know and paintings I have never seen before.  It will take a while to go through and crop and adjust them, but here is a small sample to start with.

I believe this was a commission for a Sonoma County bank that has since closed.

This is the mural that now hangs in the Yosemite Arts Center before it made its trip from Santa Rosa.

This might be the Marin Civic Center show.

A large six-panel polyptych.

I think this is the Ampex show in Redwood City, CA (with artist).

An early abstract style.

A wood construction.

A classic tree painting.

Fragrance of Nature

A Ruth Dicker fan from the Pacific Northwest sent in this photo.  The painting is called Fragrance of Nature and it is from 1963.  It is a nice example of mid-century modern style.

More slides coming soon…

I am planning on scanning a large box of slides soon.  Should be some interesting stuff in there including rarer styles, wood constructions, and photos from shows.

Yellow Field

A Ruth Dicker painting recently showed up on Ebay. The painting is called Yellow Field and is from 1965. It appears to still have its original tags on the back and it was sold at the Christmas Festival Sales Exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1966. Happy Bidding.

More Morning Sun

I thought I had remembered a picture that showed an entire wall of paintings similar to the Morning Sun and The Walnut Tree from the previous post. I looked through my photos and didn't find the picture I was thinking of, but found at least four more instances of similar paintings. I will have to look through my slides again at some point.

These two paintings are both labeled Blossoms from 1994. The bottom painting is clearly printed from the same original as Morning Sun. The show flyer on the left is from a show at the Marin County Civic Center from 1994, so I assume that is where these were pictured:

Two more paintings without any context or names:

The last example is from a picture labeled "1990 Exhibition, Danny & Co., Santa Rosa". Danny & Company was a clothing store in Santa Rosa that often showed Ruth Dicker paintings. The third painting in second row is in the same family as Morning Sun and the first painting in the second row might be as well with additional branches filled in:

Morning Sun

Another fan sent me some pictures recently and a good story to go with them.

... my wife and I purchased what we thought was a folk art painting from an antique store (somewhere on the San Francisco peninsula, I seem to recall). One house move later and the painting got stacked behind some other picture frames. I just ran across it today and noticed it was signed. I decided to Google the artist's name. Back of the painting also has a printed form that reads:

RUTH DICKER

“Morning Sun”, 19?? (date is not legible)

12”x12”

hand print/mixed media

Here are the pictures:

A very nice piece. A hand print means Dicker constructed the three dimensional trees and then before or after painting them, she printed the designs onto other pieces of wood or paper. This particular design actually looked pretty familiar to me, so I went digging into my photos. Here are The Walnut Tree #3 and The Walnut Tree #4 from 1992:

There is a chance that Morning Sun and The Walnut Tree #3 are actually the same painting, or they are just very similar prints. I think I have even seen more versions of this particular painting, but I will have to search around for them. The torn label on Morning Sun is also likely read 1992.

Bird Love

Good find by a fan at a Bay Area Goodwill. I don't remember seeing this in slides before but it is similar to other bird paintings from the 1960s, such as Golden Pheasant, from 1962.

Here is Bird Love, from 1965: