Meet Ruby Bovill
Ruby Bovill is an emerging painter and qualified art therapist based in Naarm / Melbourne, on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people. Her abstract works explore the relationship between environment and identity, playfully shifting between foreground and background to reveal imagined landscapes where stars dance and dragonflies soar.
Through painting, Bovill connects with her creative and unconscious self, finding harmony with nature and offering viewers a moment of connection within urban life. Alongside her practice, she works as an art therapist supporting victim-survivors of family violence, using creativity as a tool for healing and self-expression.
We are excited to chat to Ruby about her creative process — from her first memory of making art to the rituals and rhythms that shape her evolving practice.
What’s your first memory of creating art?
Finger painting in kindergarten! After that probably drawing pictures on birthday cards for my friends and family as a kid.
How did you find your way to your current style or medium?
Lots of trial and error. It has felt like a long journey of figuring out a happy medium between what I like the look of and what feels authentically me. I have an internal stream of creativity that always seems to draw me back to the same place – even when I’m trying to explore different concepts. For me, a style emerged when I lent more deeply into what I was doing in my own practice and stopped looking at or comparing myself to other artists' work – that’s a trap! Once I made that my focus, one painting led into the next and I learnt a lot along the way about technique and what I liked. Although I know my work does follow a ‘style’ it’s also not fixed, always evolving and shifting as I continue to learn and deepen my creative practice.
What inspires your palette? Are you drawn to certain colours or moods?
My colour pallet goes through phases. Sometimes I become obsessed with a group of colours and will create a whole body of work using basically the same pallet. Then I’ll feel a huge creative shift and do something completely different. Often the motif influences my colour choices – but mostly it’s the world around me that inspires these choices. I’m inspired by nature, movement, shadows, sounds, smells, the feeling of being in a place that makes you feel calm or a warm hug from a friend.
How do you know when a piece is finished?
This can be really difficult! Some of my pieces follow a systematic process and I know exactly how it’s going to end before I’ve even begun. Other pieces are less planned out and more intuitive – those ones can be tricky to know when enough is enough. I tend to go by how I feel about the piece. Lots of standing back and reflecting. Sometimes I need to leave the painting for a few days and when I return if it still feels not quite right I know it's not finished. It’s definitely a skill I’ve honed over many years and many overworked paintings.
Describe your studio. What’s on your walls, what’s playing, what’s within arm’s reach?
My studio is the middle room of the house I share with my partner and our fur baby. I like it being in the centre of the house because it feels like the heart centre and that feels right to me. I have lots of open shelves splayed with art materials, photography gear, framing and hanging tools. There are old art works that I never ended up selling or doing anything with donning the paint speckled white walls. There is one window and a sky light providing beautiful natural light. My dog Frida sleeps or watches me in the corner while I work. There is slow instrumental music playing in the background, it smells like paint and sometimes the scent of an incense stick and the window is open so I can hear the birds chirping in the trees in my street.
If your art had a soundtrack, what would be playing in the background?
Hermanos Gutiérrez (maybe just because I’m painting to them a lot right now) or other slow, cinematic instrumental music.
What rituals or quirks shape your creative process?
I take lots of close-up images when I’m in natural landscapes that inspire me. I use these images to create abstractions of different plants or shapes from my pictures. I draw these motifs in a collage style to map out my ideas before hitting the canvas. Strangely, I don’t have a desk in my studio, so I do all this planning work on the floor. It’s probably not the best for my body but being on the floor makes me feel most creative.
Any tools, materials or techniques you can’t live without?
Space and time are the most important elements I need to make art. If I only have an hour free it feels impossible to start something creative. I need at least half a day, and I need my studio to be clean, organised and the natural light of day to be able to do my best work. I can work under other conditions, but it just feels so much harder!
What story do you hope your art tells in someone’s home?
I hope that my art work can tell the story of connection. As artists we can come up with all kinds of ideas about what a painting is trying to say or evoke – but at the end of the day in my opinion all that is really true with art is that someone connects with what you’ve made. I hope that when art hangs in my collectors homes – they can tell the story of how they found me and my practice, or the day they saw the painting and connected with it. I want their story to be what’s important to them about the art hanging in their home.
How do you want people to feel when they see your work?
In all my paintings I aspire to replicate a felt sense of being immersed in nature. I don’t try to create a recognisable scene or landscape – I am more interested in trying to capture the feeling of a place. I hope that when people view my work, they can experience a felt sense of connection with the natural world.
Fenton & Fenton is all about bold colour and personality. What colours define you right now?
I have always been drawn to bold colours and never shy away from using them in my wardrobe, my home or my art – that’s why I’m so pleased to have my work displayed at Fenton and Fenton. Currently, I am head over heels for deep blues and dark browns and greens – especially paired with maroon or creamy yellows.
