(Self Portrait)

Ruth A. Wall

Ruth Wall said of her small collage works, which she called her "bizarre other", that they were her best way to remain creative when work and travel took over much of her life. Wall got a later start than many of her peers in the art world, taking her first courses in darwing and painting in 1949 after five years of working as a physical therapist in military hospitals. Needing a break from "trying to patch up the mangled ends of war", she enrolled in the California School of Fine Arts for three years.

A five year stint in Paris, a return to California, and a decade of creating and exhibiting later, financial necessity and a desire to travel greatly reduced her free time. She abandoned bulky mediums for simpler methods, ones that allowed continued creativity when she could afford the time. "Oh yes," she told Art Exchange gallerist Claire P. Carlevaro in an interview for her retrospective in 2005, "I have been included in shows in San Francisco and Paris and then again in San Francisco. Work, travel, time took their toll and I ceased to paint and print and did mainly my bizarre other."