Turning metal into gold - Ruby Rhizome on intimacy and art

How to turn metal into gold? I think i’m beginning to understand. 

I often feel like my art is more exposing then if I was completely visually exposed.

To feel like my creation is true and pure, I have to completely open up and dig deep inside myself. And then show it. Otherwise the art remains not completely true to itself, and at it’s best, remains a quick visually contemplative beauty. At it worst it looks like an cheap empty perfume bottle.

And sometimes it is quite uncomfortable to show yourself in that way. Admitting to the world all that you are.

I feel like I personally knew so many artist from the history only because I could read their souls through their works. 

But I believe that in order to go beyond a notion of a ‘good artist’ artist, you have to cross over that line. To go a bit beyond than what feels good. To be true to yourself. To admit. Not to hide in veils and masks like human nature usually does. To find that truth and show it as it is, imperfect, vulnerable and harsh. There is a true beauty in that.

Courage is so strange. It seemed to start when you mask the fear with belief that your way of presenting and well rehearsed way of performing is going good and that you will be taken into grater consideration by the like minded. But it seems to me that it takes much more resilience in standing the way you are, human and vulnerable.

I am starting to realise that turning metal into gold is not about overcoming the fears, but rather getting to fall in love with them. 

Ruby Rhizome, detail from 'The Art Of Forgetting', Digital drawing, MRI brain scans, and poetry, 2025