“Cosmic Consciousness”, a series of oil, acrylic, and enamel paintings created by Ruth Silnes many years before actual photos were available from space, shows us uncanny portraits of the splendor of the cosmos.

The exhibition opens June 4 and closes July 31 in the Caldwell Gallery, 500 County Center, in Redwood City. Gallery hours are 9 to 5 Monday through Friday.

Ruth Silnes, painted this series in the 70’s and early 80’s, while the nation anticipated the first voyage to the moon and speculated on the wonders of outer space.. Ruth was probably the most surprised to find that many of the images sent back to Earth by the Hubbell telescope closely resembled the wild imaginings of those long-ago studio days.

The oil paintings are on canvas, but the enamels are painted on masonite using a number of techniques Ruth developed the hard way experimenting until she got the images she had visualized.

A life-long artist, Ruth Silnes is also known as the author (and illustrator) of “Keeping Ahead of Winter: 4,100 Nautical Miles Inside America”, the story of a power-boat voyage from Chicago to Florida. Pen-and-ink drawings and watercolor paintings were a constant in her on-board life, and the book she eventually wrote includes many of her on-site drawings.

A San Francisco native, Ruth Silnes was originally trained in commercial art. She later studied fine art, and developed her personal style after an art agent looked at her “traditional” work and commented, “That’s nice, a lot of people paint like that.”

Exhibition history includes solo exhibitions in the Delta Art Gallery, San Diego Art Institute, The Galleria, Eugene Garen Studio, Hyatt Art Gallery, Van Ginkle and Moore, Hawaii Hyatt Regency, Pantheon Art Gallery, San Mateo County Arts Council, California Canadian Bank, Dory Art Gallery, and The Peninsula Regent Art Gallery.

Ruth Silnes lives in San Mateo and is a founding member of the Twin Pines Art Center (now the 1870 Art Center) and the Peninsula Museum of Art; and a member of the California Writer’s Club, the National Association of Women Writers, the Women’s National Book Association, and International Toastmasters Club.

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