Artist Colin Ruel was settled into his new studio behind Morrice Florist, happy to discover that the big, bright open room was air-conditioned when I met with him a couple of weeks ago. Canvases lined the walls, some distinguishable with birds in flight over an expansive blue sky, and others incomplete with only gradients of orange, gold, and yellow, still waiting for Ruel’s paintbrush. You can find his work hanging at the Field Gallery through the end of July, and at the Carnegie in Edgartown as part of the exhibit “Westerly Connections: Art from Up-Island,” through August 3.
“This place has great natural light,” he said, looking around the studio. “I like to work on a bunch of things at once so that I don’t overwork things. If you keep thinking, ‘I’ve gotta get this done,’ then you ruin it. I work on a bunch of things at once so I can find that sweet spot.”
Ruel paints with the canvas on the floor, bending over, kneeling, or sitting cross-legged with the canvas in front of him; he has a special cushion to protect his knees. One of his paintbrushes is duct-taped to the end of a long pole, and you get the impression Ruel is ready to improvise to achieve what he wants on the canvas.
He didn’t go to art school, but there’s a vein of creativity that runs through his family. His grandfather was a fisherman who carved wooden weathervanes. “His weathervanes are cool, and the little men he would carve, they’re almost like outsider art,” Ruel says.
Ruel’s married to jewelry artist Nettie Kent, whose father is the artist Doug Kent; they have two boys now — one 2, and one just a few months old. They moved back home to the Island after working in Brooklyn for a few years, where Ruel was an art assistant to Holton Rower, an artist known for his “pour paintings.”
“They [the artist] show you what they want done, and it’s their ideas,” Ruel said explaining the role of an artist’s assistant. “Sometimes I think they feed off the young people who work for them.”
The couple left the Island mostly because of the difficulty finding year-round housing. “Honestly, we couldn’t find a year-round house, and I got sick of the “garden shed to a winter rental” routine. Even in New York, it’s one of the most expensive places to live, but it’s cheaper than here, and you don’t have to move out,” Ruel says. “And also, I was feeling a little stuck on the Island. When you measure yourself against the rest of the world, well, you go to New York and you’re not special in any way. You go there and strive. Sometimes here you wonder, ‘Am I really doing good, or is this Island good?’”
Ruel’s style has changed over the past few years; he’s painting landscapes and Island scenes these days, and if you look closely, you’ll realize they’re a visual story. In “Robb Hands Davis a Beer,” a man in hunting gear and stocking hat passes off a Budweiser to a waiting hand; his pickup truck with a deer carcass in the bed is in the background. “Skaters” is a winter-moody piece, where you can feel the cold air when you look at the painting of a circle of skaters with hockey sticks ready to face off. These aren’t ordinary paintings — you feel something when you look at them, and that’s just what the artist is hoping for.
“I try to paint how it feels more than how it looks,” Ruel tells me. “I like the winter here when it’s muted but there are spots of red. I try not to get too hung up on the real colors, but instead where the light is coming from.”
His paintings of birds across an open sky aren’t ordinary either. Somehow it feels like the birds are in the room with you.
“I do think it’s a cool, open feeling, like if you had a bird in your house,” he explains while I’m looking at a huge painting-in-progress with a turquoise sky, birds in flight. “There are a few birds I love — wrens, redwing blackbirds, and terns and catbirds; they might be a little boring to look at, but I try.”
Ruel is still getting used to painting as his “day job.” He’s been in the new studio since January. Before that he painted in his garage with the usual interruptions that come with being a new dad.
“This is great,” he says looking around his studio. “It’s nice to get up, get my coffee, and go to work. Leaving the house is so important, it defines your day and helps you focus better. If you get distracted when you’re painting, you can’t just pick up where you left off.”
Works at the current exhibits are true Island scenes — hunters, opening the cut at the Great Pond, fishing — it’s almost a collection, the way they fit together. “They’re really little stories from the year,” Ruel says. “We moved back here now for good. I always wanted to, but it was a matter of having a place to live. I’m not really a city person, I wanted to be fishing and in the woods. My family’s here, Nettie’s family’s here.”
Looks like Colin Ruel has come home.
