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.
Never one to shy away from difficult painting problems, Ruth Ford may have found this complex scene an enjoyable challenge. The strong verticals of the buildings and equipment perched atop the strong horizontals of the boats and water, flipped in the lower 10% of the painting to become reflections … capturing all this took courage and confidence. And we have seen throughout this show that Mrs. Ford did not lack for either. The acquisitions story given to us by the collectors is that she gave the painting to an Aurora police officer after discussing a traffic violation. She got the ticket anyway. And he got an education in fine art.
