ELEANOR RUFTY (b. Taylorsville, North Carolina, 1936)

Untitled (Woman and man with stripes), 1988
charcoal on paper

Collection of the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts
The Jack Blanton Collection
Gift of Jack Blanton
2007.23.39

Eleanor Rufty is a prolific Richmond artist who creates prints, drawings, and paintings. She received her B.F.A from Virginia Commonwealth University. In addition to working as an artist, she has taught for many years at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Of her work Rufty has said, “I’m not interested when something obviously is happening. I’m interested in the intervals, the moments in life when nothing is happening. What interests me about that quiet time is that it’s a momentary disengagement. No matter if you are in a crowded room, you back into yourself momentarily. When the Vermeer show was at the National Gallery of Art, a curator wrote that in Vermeer the everyday moment—the moment between moments—takes on metaphysical significance. I’m very much drawn to painting where that happens.”