Title

Ruth Ainsworth: Printmaker and Teacher.

Author

Maxwell, Helen.

Source

ANGA news [Australian National Gallery Association News]. Canberra: Australian National Gallery.

Details

January-February, 1989, pp.12-14.

Publication date

February 1989

Physical description

ill., 2 black and white

Type

Essay/article

Language

English

Country of context

Australia

Full text

PRINTS AND AUSTRALIA: Ruth Ainsworth, Printmaker and Teacher.
by Helen Maxwell

In 1928, Ruth Ainsworth made a decision to take up teaching as a career and became the Art Mistress at Frensham School, a private girls school at Mittagong, New South Wales, established in 1914 by the visionary Winifred West (1881-1971). In taking this step, Ainsworth recognized that she was abandoning a possible career as a practicing artist, but made her decision with conviction.

Ruth Ainsworth was born on 8 September 1900 in Ballina on the north coast of New South Wales. Soon after her birth, her family moved to Sydney and she grew up at Warrawee on the North Shore. In 1921, she began a Bachelor of Arts degree at Sydney University, becoming part of a small but growing group of women who were continuing their education at university. At the same time, Ainsworth felt the need for some artistic content in her life, and towards the end of 1922 she enrolled as a part-time student at Julian Ashton’s Sydney Art School.

In early 1923, Ainsworth and her sister Fay were taken overseas by their aunt, Lute Drummond, a well-known music teacher and opera accompanist in Sydney. The tour was well planned and, in addition to exploring historical sites, Ruth and her sister were taken to many major orchestral and operatic events, as well as art galleries and contemporary art shows. Ainsworth was astounded by the Cubist and Surrealist works that were then being exhibited in Europe, and her life-long interest in the ideas underlying modern art was established.

By the time she returned to Australia, Ainsworth had already decided to discontinue her studies at Sydney University, and she enrolled as a full-time student at the Sydney Art School. Teaching methods there were traditional, and the approach to art was on the whole conservative — Julian Ashton was not an adherent of modernism. However, the 1920s was an interesting time in Sydney: new and controversial art theories, filtering through from Europe with returning travellers and a few available publications, were just beginning to be discussed and promoted - and vigorously resisted. Ainsworth came into contact with some of the artists who became increasingly involved in the modernist movement in Sydney - Grace Crowley (1890- 1979), Anne Dangar (1885-1951), Margaret Preston (1875-1963) and Thea Proctor (1879-1966).

Thea Proctor had begun to teach design at the Sydney Art School in 1926, and Ainsworth became one of her students. For Proctor, design was a vital element in art. To help her students become aware of the various aspects of design, she encouraged them to make linocuts in which line and form were simplified and exaggerated.

Other students who produced linocuts in Thea Proctor’s design classes included Vera Blackburn, Ysobel Irvine, Jessie Digby, Gladys Gibbons, Isabel Huntley, Ailsa Lee Brown, Arnie Kingston, Adrian Feint, Edgar Ritchard, Violet McKee and Margaret Arnott. Works by several of these artists, along with woodcuts by students of Professor Cizek in Vienna, were used to illustrate an article in the September 1927 issue of Art in Australia titled ‘The Importance of Design and its Relation to the Student’ by H.H. Fotheringham.

Although linocuts were not actually produced at the School, students were instructed in the process of cutting lino by the teacher Henry Gibbons, who, Ainsworth remembers, improvised cutting tools by modifying umbrella spokes. She also remembers printing the linocuts using the washing-machine wringer at home. She printed on Japanese paper, which she acquired from a sailor who had visited Japan. The students were encouraged to present their linocuts for criticism, and on one occasion were invited to take a work to Thea Proctor’s studio, where Margaret Preston was in attendance to offer comments on their compositions. Ainsworth presented The tightrope walker, c.1927, and recalls that Preston was impressed not only with the aerial perspective but also with the fact that Ainsworth had resisted Proctor’s influence.

Ainsworth’s linocuts convey the joy of experimenting with the qualities of design. Her works are strongly individual and demonstrate a considered understanding of the possibilities of the medium. In her masterly composition Poppies, 1927, several distinct areas of pattern simultaneously accentuate and act against the linear balance of the design. In Merry-go-round, 1927, strongly defined central forms create a contrast with the forms of the peripheral figures, which are suggested by a few outlining cuts.

The subject matter for Ainsworth’s linocuts came directly from her experiences. The tightrope walker was prompted partly by a visit to the circus. At the same time she was reading Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche, and the lines Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the superman! A rope over an abyss’ were running through her mind.

In the late 1920s, linocuts and woodcuts became popular forms of home decoration. According to a report in the December 1927 issue of The Home, this was largely due to the production of linocuts by the students of the Sydney Art School, although most did not continue to make linocuts after they had left the School.

When Ainsworth started working at Frensham she no longer had the time to produce her own linocuts. She injected her energies into teaching art, including linocutting, to her students. A photograph by Harold Cazneaux taken in 1934 shows Ainsworth demonstrating the process of printing the linocut using an office press. Through her influence, the students took to linocutting enthusiastically, using their prints to decorate the covers of programs for concerts and theatre productions, speech days and other events.

In 1935, encouraged by the headmistress Winifred West, Ainsworth travelled to England to extend her knowledge of weaving and pottery. She studied weaving at Saffron Walden and at the Hassocks in Sussex, and pottery at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and with Bernard Leach at St yes. Before returning to Australia in 1 935, she visited Moly Sabata, the artists’ community established in the south of France in 1 927 by Albert Gleizes. At the request of her friend and colleague Anne Dangar - an Australian expatriate artist who was living and working at Moly Sabata - Ainsworth took a loom to the community to demonstrate weaving techniques. When Ainsworth returned to Australia she brought with her a large loom, three spinning wheels and a potter’s wheel. Her teaching in these areas formed a basis for the later development of the Sturt Craft Workshops in Mittagong, New South Wales.

Towards the end of the second world war, Ainsworth left Frensham and returned to Sydney, where she joined The Studio Theatre, which was established and run by the eurhythmics and drama teacher Alice Crowther. As well as attending classes and performing in plays, Ainsworth participated in most other aspects of theatre production. including the design and production of sets, props and costumes. She remained with The Studio Theatre for nine years, returning to Frensham as a teacher in 1953.

In 1963 Ainsworth retired from teaching and moved to Sydney, although she has maintained a strong link with the school as an advisor. She has also continued to be involved in other areas of education, and for sometime led workshops on the principles of Rudolph Steiner. Her life is an expression of her belief in the joy of learning.

© Helen Maxwell, 1989.
The author wishes to express her appreciation to Ruth Ainsworth for generously submitting to several hours of intensive interviewing, a process which not only provided a wealth of information, but also became a most enjoyable experience.