Ruth Dennis Grover papers

Ruth Dennis Grover was born in 1912 in Portland, Oregon. She spent her early years in Michigan and spent summers with her mother in Oregon. She started her art training in high school, attending art school on Saturdays. She studied under Jean Paul Slusser and Ha A. Fowler at the University of Michigan where she graduated with honors. She also studied at Detroit School of Applied Art and the Meizinger Foundation Art School under Carlos Lopez and Don Gooch. In 1939, after her father’s death, she and her mother moved to Oregon and in 1940 they settled in Wecoma, now Lincoln City. In 1944 she moved to Roads End where she lived until her death in 2003.

Her paintings begin with a natural form though some seem abstract. The subjects of her paintings include growth and decay, constant mutation of form and force, universal repetition and endless variation. Well known for watercolors, she also worked in the encaustic method, an ancient wax and pigment medium with exceptional luminosity and performance. It involves a “heating in” process which creates extraordinarily transparent and brilliant color and unusual texture. Grover worked with various mixed media, acrylics and drawings. Her intense interest in basic natural patterns combined with exploration of various spatial, textural and color relations to produce unique works.

Grover was a member of the Oregon Society of Artists. She exhibited in Agate Shows and was president of the Agate Society for five years and secretary for one year. She also helped develop the Lincoln County Art Center where she taught children and adult classes in the 1940s. In 1952 she established Cascade Artists, a group of amateurs and professionals whose work Grover organized in exhibitions on the coast as well as throughout Oregon, Idaho, Washington and California.

From the 1960s until the end of her life she lived with her companion, Martha Kay Renfroe.