Rosalinda Ruiz-Scarfuto
Ode to Mt. Tam & Gary Snyder: Cabin Fever by Rosalinda Ruiz-Scarfuto, 2016, Mixed Media, 34×25
Ode to Mt. Tam & Gary Snyder: Study I by Rosalinda Ruiz-Scarfuto, 2015, Acrylic on Canvas, 16×20
Rosalinda is a native Californian, former Artistic Director of Alisal Center for the Fine Arts (Salinas), published poet and multimedia artist. She is a researcher at Sunderland University, UK (PhD) investigating the 3D poetic canvas. Currently her artwork is deeply rooted in how to re-engage with Nature given the alienation arising between humans themselves, Nature and Art partially due to high-tech composed environments. She currently resides in Spain and visits California.
Rosalinda began her artistic career with her love for ceramics and poetry. She has lived and traveled from Japan to Spain, walking the land observing people and Nature from dynamic urban settings such as Bombay, India to serene rural landscapes in Chuka Meru, Kenya. Her first trip around the world was a 5 year sojourn; living in Japan for 2 years, Thailand for a year and finally returning to her roots in Spain and Italy for a year by the age of 26. In Japan she studied with artist Yoshida in Tokyo learning the craft of Hanga (wood cut printing). During her travels she developed her photography skills. In California she studied jazz. The prolonged stays in Asia expanded her interests in Buddhist philosophy and fostered a new style of poetry in search of “wabi sabi.” Her Spanish year delved into yet another style of poetry that drew out the “duende.” Upon return to California, she shared her experiences in multi-medium performance art combining dance, photography and poetry with other artists on stage or in a planetarium arena.
Rosalinda currently is involved in her practice based PhD in the Art, Design and Media (W. A. L. K. Institute) which combines poetry and visual arts based on walking the footsteps of heritage poets (Wordsworth, Machado, Whitman, and Snyder). Her process is based on three phases she calls “re-play”: 1) walking (visual and tactile) 2) transfer of the palette of colors on canvas and 3) creating a sculpture with fragments of poetry and colors. This process invites the profound essence of Nature to settle into her consciousness and then create unlike landscape painting in situ. She allows an incubation period of a fortnight before touching a brush in the studio. Her main research is experimenting with the tactile perception drawing on the origins of rock artists. Pigments are sometimes combinations of organic substances gathered on the walks or soils from the land of choice poet. The materials for the sculpture depend on each poet and their inspiring landscapes.
The creative process is her main research for new poetry replaying on the original poetry and translating it into a visual art as homage to the poets and their inspiring landscapes. Her work is based on re-engaging the artist with Nature to be able to share those experiences with the audience in hope that our empathy quotient will not be diminished with each generation leading us to more suffering and/or planetary extinction.