I don't wait for inspiration. I just work and try to remain open to the alchemy in the process. I start a picture and the possibilities are limitless. Where I go from there depends on my courage.
- Ruth Franklin
Raised in rural Suffolk near the East Anglian coast, Ruth Franklin studied painting at Brighton Art School from 1983 to 1986, where her fellow students included future Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread. Several established artists regularly visited the college and critiqued students' work, while an emphasis on independent exploration allowed Franklin to develop her own approach to painting. Following graduation, she began exhibiting in galleries and museums along England's south coast.
In 1994, Franklin emigrated to the US, settling in Decatur, Georgia, where she established the full-time studio practice she continues today.
Drawing on photographs, historical archives, literature, and personal experience, Franklin has developed a visual language that moves between representation and abstraction. Her subjects have included immigrants arriving at Ellis Island, Depression-era figures, boxers, prostitutes, domestic interiors, and imagined landscapes. Often beginning with a photograph, she transforms the recorded image into something more ambiguous, seeking an emotional or psychological presence beyond the original subject.
Her approach is intuitive and experimental. Working with paint, charcoal, and other drawing materials, she builds, scrapes, erases, and reworks images, allowing unexpected relationships of color, form, and texture to redirect a painting. Rather than imposing a predetermined outcome, she follows the possibilities that emerge through the physical act of creating.
Her work has evolved in response to personal experience. Following her father's death in 2010, Franklin's paintings became increasingly fragmented and angular. Gradually, these gave way to layered compositions she describes as "electric dreams", marking a period of renewed exploration.
Franklin's work has been exhibited in the United States, Europe, and Asia, including exhibitions at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (2004), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (2013), and The Dalton Gallery at Agnes Scott College (2020). Selected solo exhibitions include Gallery 71, New York (1996 and 1998); Only When I Laugh (2019) and Golden Isles (2024) at Different Trains Gallery, Decatur; and Old and New Dreams at The WADDI, Atlanta (2022).
Her paintings and drawings are represented in private and corporate collections, including AT&T, ASCAP, King & Spalding, Deloitte & Touche, the City of Decatur, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Her commissions include projects for Agnes Scott College, Universal Studios Florida, and album artwork commissioned by pioneering British saxophonist and improviser Trevor Watts.
Franklin was voted Best Established Visual Artist by readers of Atlanta's Creative Loafing in 2014 and 2018 and was nominated for a USA Artists Fellowship in 2016. Her work has been reviewed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and other regional publications.
Franklin lives and works in Decatur, Georgia.