Ruth Sallon and her husband live up some steps on a street tipping steeply down from Muswell Hill.
It may be fanciful to speak of Muswell Hill and Montmartre in the same breath, but visiting Ruth’s house and studio on a dark afternoon did suggest a likeness; the same drama in their perched situations, the same appeal to artists (formerly, that is, when prices allowed).
The title of Ruth’s show, Above the Blue City, refers to the view she has painted from Waterlow Park where she says "in Springtime you can see the panorama of the distant city stretched out below like a cobalt blue carpet".
But it could also apply to Muswell Hill.
A born and bred North Londoner, Ruth has been painting and teaching for decades. She signs messages “colourfully yours”, a greeting upheld in her current work and her comment, “the more colour I have, the better I am”.
It is a matter of pushing colours a bit further, so autumn leaves or spring blossoms are brighter, distances bluer. Visitors to the exhibition will see Sandy Heath, Regent's Park or Kew Gardens as they know them, but a touch more theatrical. Similarly, the jugs, sunflowers and dolls or wooden ducks in the still life paintings are put vibrantly before us, demanding to be encountered, not passed over as mere decoration.
Ruth, who has customised an Argos shopping trolley as a plein air painting table with collapsible easel, says her work is "intensely colourful and uplifting, as an antidote to the miserabilist mood of our times".
She speaks of things possessing an inner spark or light and of the "forgotten" beauty" of London’s parks. When I object, saying that people love Hampstead Heath, Waterlow Park, and are far from forgetting them, she qualifies her statement by saying the parks are overlooked as subjects, that fellow artists ask why she bothers with them instead of working in France or Italy.
As a child her father, a keen walker, would march his four children from Dollis Hill to the open spaces of Hampstead Heath as "a refuge from our depressing home."
"London parks are still as much of a safety valve for Londoners as they were in my childhood."
Visiting this exhibition in the darkness of February will be a way of stepping into a brighter space.
Above the Blue City runs at Lauderdale House, Waterlow Park from February 1-28.https://www.lauderdalehouse.org.uk/
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules here