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Article: Ellis Ruley, The Unlikely Yankee Painter
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- September 1, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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Art has a way of happening where it's least expected. It happened
one day in a shack in Connecticut in 1939, when Ellis Ruley (1882-
1959) started painting see-through pictures on his window screens.
Ruley was already 57, an isolated black man with a third-grade
education. He made his living as a mason's tender, which meant that
he hauled rocks.
Where, and through what miracle, did Ruley find his confidence,
his idiosyncratic, dream-inflected vision, his instinct for design?
"Discovering Ellis Ruley," the touring retrospective that goes on
view tomorrow at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, fills the mind with
questions. Where does such art come from? Believers in the Zeitgeist
will say it was ...