Welcome to Robards Gallery.

Ruth Robards Thompson
cakery@mchsi.com
228-264-2260

A New Orleans native, Ruth Robards Thompson grew up the youngest of five children, and the only girl among four brothers. Her summers were spent fishing with her father and brothers in the bayous of Louisiana and swimming on the shores of the Mississippi coast where her family owned a small summer home.

Hurricane Camille destroyed the summerhouse in 1967, and nearly 20 years later Ruth returned to the site and built her family's new home there. She and her husband and daughters settled in Bay St. Louis, opening a bakery that became a local favorite for the next 20 years.

While decorating cakes, Ruth rediscovered her love and talent for art. Using a palette knife and oils on canvas as her favorite medium (similar to icing a cake), she began showing her works at local art shows, and became a regularly featured artist in "A Place of Art", a three-day art festival held each year in Bay St. Louis.

She soon branched out into pottery, purchasing a kiln that was kept on the back porch of the bakery. And she converted half the building into an art gallery that displayed both her works and the works of other local artists. Her pottery was featured on New Orleans Public Television (WYES-TV).

When Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, Ruth lost her bakery, her gallery, and her home. But like many other artists she found a new appreciation and a therapeutic need for art. Surrounded by colorless streets, mud, leafless trees and FEMA trailers, she began using radical new colors in her works. She also found that images of her childhood - those summers spent fishing on the bayou, a time before both hurricanes - resurfaced again and again in her dreams. Those images inspired her marshgrass series, among others.

Not only has the look of her work evolved, but her media as well. With the loss of her kiln and supplies, she was forced to abandon clay (for the immediate future) and work with acrylics donated by Artisan-Santa Fe, an art supply store in Santa Fe, New Mexico that donated supplies to the Gulf Coast art community.

Since changing from oils to acrylics, Ruth's work has been juried into shows at the Foundry Gallery in Washington, D.C., the Rome Area Council for the Arts in Rome, GA, the Gala Gallery in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., Southern Surge in Alexandria, VA, Gallery X in New Bedford, MA and Michelin Gallery in Doylestown, PA. Her work was also juried into the MAC and Andy Show sponsored by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the Mississippi Arts Commission and held at the Fondren Renaissance Foundation in Jackson, MS. A piece of her pottery is featured in "Walking On Water", an art catalog of Hancock County artists. Her work is also featured on the cover of the 2007 edition street map for Hancock County, Mississippi and in the 2006 and 2007 editions of The Sunshine Pages, a regional telephone book.

Ruth still lives in Bay St. Louis, having just completed work on her new house. She has a small one-room studio in her home, and wonderful view of the sunrise from her window.

If you are interested in purchasing her work, click on an image for more information.

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