Ruby Read

Originally from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, Ruby Read earned her BA in Painting from Camberwell College of Arts in 2024 and is currently completing her MA at the Royal College of Art. Rooted in portraiture and the human figure, her work explores the tensions and tenderness of being looked at. Her paintings are expressive, often uncanny, and always deeply personal. Her self-portraits, fleshy, doll-like, and sometimes grotesque, play with the performance of femininity, unpicking the ideals imposed on young women with a blend of humour and critique.

Her creative process is inseparable from observation. A natural people watcher, Ruby is drawn to the intimacy of everyday interactions and the quiet strangeness of passing expressions. These fleeting moments find their way into her paintings, where faces are distorted, exaggerated, and rendered with a thick visceral delight in the materiality of paint itself. Thick impasto, limited tonal ranges and bold, exaggerated colours give her subjects an icing-like, almost artificial presence, heavily influenced by a conglomeration of artists like Emilio Vilalba, Frank Auerbach, and John Currin.

Visually, her world draws from the faded glamour of vintage postcards, retro beauty culture, and the dreamlike haze of classic film. There’s a nostalgic thread that runs through the work, but it’s warped, skewed, and slightly surreal.