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By DIANA BIRD
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
Gallery member Rene Breuguet Ruffner entitles his exhibition of 18 paintings at the Middle Street Gallery “Conferring with the Moon.” Although not every picture has a moon in it, many do.
The moon as a symbol has long engaged artists — poets, painters and musicians. For Mr. Ruffner, however, it is only one of many objects he uses symbolically in his largely surrealistic paintings.
Since all 18 pictures are in the main exhibition room of the gallery, the density of his images induces an almost overpowering experience.
The largest picture, “Slow Bum,” is the only abstract painting he has done. Like his others, it is forceful and complicated, made with many colors and impasto.
Mr. Ruffner’s art is, for the most part, challenging to the viewer because to see it, one must stop to find the contents and then use one’s imagination to let what is there tell you something. For example, “Homecoming” is a view from a handsome pink marble portico that shows an orchard in full green leaf in the near distance and further away, ranges of mountains of two colors. A flower is in the center, and, just inside the portico to the right, an open umbrella beside a puddle of water.
To me, “Homecoming” said, “My home is my palace, a happy refuge from the accidents of fortune, but also a place from which to see beauty and the far unknown.” This picture is somewhat less complicated than are a number of the others.
There is variety in Mr. Ruffner’s work and one could not find his fingerprints on every one of his pictures, but on most of them one can. His colors are often strong and bright, what he calls “Renaissance colors.” As did many Renaissance painters, he features architecture, emphasizing arches.
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