Née Yvonne Michele Anderson in Washington, DC towards the close of the Civil Rights Era to a Caribbean-born Father and American-born Mother, both brown-skinned Musta’arabi/Misrahi/Sepharadi crypto-Jews and Jews by birth with diverse heritages who were raised as Christians, and having grown up along the Atlantic shores of her maternal Coastal Virginia, Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham’s work treats the themes of HaMisrah (“the East” and the Middle East and North Africa as the crossroads of Europe, Africa, and Asia), African origins, the South/Southerness, Gan Eden/the garden, birth/rebirth, water/the sea, journey/voyage/movement, struggle/resilience, healing, growth, oneness/unity, departure/return and positive affirmation and elevation in knowledge of self and one’s personal relationship with our Creator.

As a Ba’alat Teshuba (one who has returned to Jewish observance, here, in the feminine expression), her work is Torah-inspired, whether tangibly or intangibly, and ranges from the abstract to the literal to the sacred, the latter embodied by her hand-crafted designs for personal items, wares for the home and Judaica that one may actually hold and use in order to praise Hashem, to take care of oneself and to keep one’s soul well as a Jew (Debarim/Deuteronomy 4:9).

She hopes and prays that people of all backgrounds and faiths are able to find reflections of G-d’s love, light and life in her work.

Ms. Anderson-Avraham’s preferred visual and fine arts media are photographic and digital filmmaking, photography, acrylic and digital painting, watercolor, mixed media collage, and chalk, charcoal, graphite and mixed media drawing.  Her tangible three-dimensional creations are constructed in sculpture (primarily using natural materials such as clay, wood, cement and fabric), ceramics, jewelry design and craft, and glass (in various formats and modalities).  Her stories are woven not only visually, but also in prose, poetry (including for song), for the screen (and, perhaps, in the future, for the stage), as well as musically.  Language is the point of intersection between her visual, fine arts, written and musical work, a trait also characteristic to several other Artists within her family.

In 2006, while living and working in Paris, France, she founded Bold World/ReelNATION, dedicated to her film financing and production activity, Cité Cinergie/Bold World Arts, a non-profit association dedicated to uplifting young people (ages 11-18) in the Parisian banlieues through the visual arts, and ISRAELrealNATION, an independent non-profit Israel advocacy association educating the public and building bridges, in hope that the children of Israel, the Middle East, and the larger world may one day know peace.

During that time, she also began her work on chaigallerie | חי גאלרי, a Judaica and Fine Art Gallery featuring the work of artists across Israel, the Middle East, and the Jewish Diaspora, blossoming from a modest, growing collection of her own artwork.

A graduate of the University of Virginia (B.S., English Language and Literature/Religious Studies), Harvard Law School (J.D.), and the École des Hautes-Études Commerciales, Paris (M.B.A.), and a former graduate student in International Law and International Economic Theory and Policy at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Ms. Anderson-Avraham brings to her artistry a level of secular study, thought and philosophy which now deepens her Torah knowledge and inspiration, as well as her being and experience, on every plane, and heightens her understanding of and approach to her creative work and expression as an observant Jew, as a woman, as a human being.

Her international business experience includes financial, mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, and corporate transactions, as well as contract drafting and negotiations, of the highest caliber as a professional qualified in both the United States and France who has lived and worked in expert environments (including film, fine arts, and technology industry clients) in Geneva, Frankfurt, Paris, and Milan.

Although she has received formal Art History, Music, Fine Arts, Design, Filmmaking, Crafts, and Creative Writing instruction at various times during the course of her life since childhood, primarily in the United States and Europe, she is largely a self-taught Artist in respect of her preferred artistic media, from a creative family blessed with both formally trained and self-taught Artists, Writers, and Musicians ~ many with parallel professions in academia, the medical, research and applied sciences, and the liberal arts ~ celebrating the richness and texture of the overlapping layers and dimensions of their daily lives, the gift of our Creator...

Tending the garden of her soul’s creative imagination with love, Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham continues to learn and grow, just as a Mother continues to learn and grow while tending to her children.  Though the creation of a two-dimensional or three-dimensional work of art is certainly not equivalent to the Divine creation of a child, there is a Divine collaboration and a sanctity in the act of positive creation, at every level, which is universally shared. “[The] integration of story and art is key.  Word is water. Creative voice is light.”

   “I am but dust and ashes.” | “The world was created for me (for us!).” 
   (Beresheit 18:27)             (Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 37a)    

~ Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham

Copyright © Ruth Rachel Anderson-Avraham,
27 Sivan 5777 / 21 June 2017
All Rights Reserved.