Every week during the exhibit “Aurora’s Own Ruth Van Sickle Ford,” we will feature one of the more than two dozen watercolor and oil paintings on display from March 3-May 13, 2023, at the Pierce Art and History Center. Accompanying the images will be commentary by art conservator and Aurora Historical Society museum assistant Scott Sherwood. We hope you will be engaged and enlightened by this feature and that you will come to the Pierce Center to see the paintings up close and personal. Exhibit hours are listed below.
c. 1930s
Oil on Canvas
On Loan from Jenny & Kevin Trudo
Another “Masks” painting was just added to the Ford exhibit. Once again borrowing the classical tradition of a beautiful young person contrasted with masks, Mrs. Ford gives us a glimpse into her artistic life in the 1930s and 40s. At that time she was painting in the urban and urbane arts worlds of Chicago and New York as you can see by the glamor and moodiness of these works. Her later work in the 1950s through the 1980s was very different.
Ruth originally gave the painting to Jenny’s grandfather, Michael Meketi, an Aurora artist who owned a gallery and frame shop, probably in the 1970s. Jenny has owned the painting for over 20 years. Framed by Fox Valley Blueprint, 2005.
