Artist Bio

Ruby M. Theyson is an intuitive abstract artist creating within the threshold of ancestral memory, ritual, and deep knowing. Her work carries an ancient pulse; layered, textural, and reverent shaped by California roots and a quieter life in North Carolina.

Deeply influenced by ancient cultures, she is especially moved by those of her Scandinavian ancestors, the spoken folklore, old gods, and symbolic worlds, her paintings often feel like fragments of a forgotten mythology. 

Theyson works with acrylic, oil, salt, and other natural materials with her paintings emerging as offerings rather than constructions. Often cold wax moves through her work as both material and ritual, a reflection of her practice as a professional chandler; melted, sealed with intention.

Her process is one of listening, allowing the unseen to guide form and mark and where gesture becomes a kind of return. Theyson's paintings become vessels for memory, myth, and embodied experience, holding what lingers beyond words. 

Alongside painting, her devotion to poetry, 35mm film, and analog weaves the sense of tangible connection through her work, and sharpens the sensitivity. At its core, Ruby’s work is an invocation and an offering of presence, connection, and the recognition of the unseen threads that bind us.

Artist Photo: Reliquary/ Victoria Byers