By Gail McCarthy
When Boston sculptor Ruth Mordecai moved to Gloucester a decade ago, she immersed herself in painting, taking her paints and brushes outdoors to work on location.
She also took her three-dimensional ideas and translated them to a flat surface.
"I had been a studio artist mostly working inside so I was excited about being outside," she said. "It really refreshed and energized my work. I use more color now."
Mordecai will open a week-long show on Rocky Neck at the new studio space that is now home to the Rocky Neck artists-in-residence at 51 A Rocky Neck Ave. The show opens next Thursday, the same night as the monthly Nights on the Neck. The free reception, open to the public, takes place from 5 to 9 p.m.
This will be Mordecai's first one-person Cape Ann show, and it will run through July 7.
Mordecai, who is represented by Boston's Soprafina Gallery, said she had an opportunity to rent the new space in between artists-in-residence, so she wanted to host a show for her friends and neighbors on Cape Ann.
"I have a work studio here that doesn't have a gallery space so this felt like an opportunity to just share my work with my community, my village," she said. "It's a wonderful new space."
This show features her new work, and a small series involving variations on the theme of landscape.
The major work is large scale, about 3-by-4 feet. Many of the pieces are from the series called "Between Painting and Sculpture."
Mordecai infuses her spiritual side in her work.
"I also draw on references from things I have read, and some biblical references," she said.
Her work also encompasses her devotion to family.
"No one would know that looking at the work but family and children are what I cherish," she said. "For the most part I have painted with gratitude for my many blessings and with the perpetual theme running through my head of how to hold the world and those I love safe."
She calls many of her works "painted prayers."
Modecai draws inspiration from both the human form and the landscape, from childhood memories and from ancient biblical text, symbols, and poetry.
Although her early training was as a sculptor studying the figure, her connection to sculptural form has endured even as she has turned to painting.
In 1993, she received a grant to work in Jerusalem.
"I came upon an ancient 36-inch high ceramic vessel at the Israel Museum. It had an abstracted sun and tree of life crudely carved into the clay," she said in an artist statement. "References to these images and others like them have remained in my work over the last 16 years, as I have been drawn to this minimal, primal kind of representation."
Her work is in collections, including the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem and the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University in Waltham. The Boston Public Library's Wiggin Prints and Drawings Department owns 25 of her works on paper. For information, visit www.ruthmordecai.com.
Gail McCarthy can be reached at gmccarthy@gloucestertimes.com.
