Roy Carruthers

Roy Carruthers was born in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in 1938, and graduated from the Technical College of Art, Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1956.  He was the recipient of the American Institute of Graphic Art and the Gold Medal Society of Illustrators in 1973, and his work is in the collections of the Ulrich Museum, Wichita, Kansas, the Weatherspoon Art Gallery, the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, the University of Wyoming, Laramie, and the Ponce Museum, Puerto Rico, among others.  Whether it be expressed in a painting or a work on paper, Carruthers’ signature style is hard to resist.  He seamlessly transforms a sleeping woman, a plumber, the open shelves of a cabinet, the wooden flooring of an interior, a teapot, and other everyday objects through a curious distortion of proportion and a muted palette of warm earthy colors.  Recalling the Surrealist experiments of Matta and Picasso, his manipulated images replace the expected geometry of the real world with a simple yet wondrous reverie. Roy Carruthers died in 2013.

*Excerpted from Tools as Art: the Hechinger Collection, published by International Arts & Artists