In Conversation with Ruby Sky Stiler

Courtesy of Ruby Sky Stiler

Ruby Sky Stiler (b. 1979) was born in Portland, ME, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Her multi-dimensional practice draws from diverse time periods, artistic movements, and genres, imbuing familial and political structures with her own feminist values and insights. Nodding to art historical archetypes, Stiler’s work reimagines and recasts the history of figuration and the nude through intricate processes of disruption, fragmentation, and layering.

Conducted on the occasion of Long Pose, Ruby Sky Stiler’s first solo exhibition with Alexander Gray Associates in New York, this conversation traces the artist’s ongoing exploration of figuration, materiality, and art historical revision. 

RENATA: Your practice draws from such a rich constellation of references—from Greco-Roman sculpture and Art Deco design to the work of modernists like Anni Albers and Louise Nevelson. How do you navigate this vast lineage without collapsing under its weight? Is there a particular art historical dialogue that continues to feel urgent for you today?

RUBY: In my work, I draw from a mix of influences that span centuries and cultures—it’s a way of feeling connected to the past, present, and future all at once. Louise Nevelson’s work, especially, still feels incredibly alive to me. When I bring scraps and fragments into alignment and something new appears, I feel like I’m carrying her vision forward. When a simple form edges toward unconventional figuration, I’m extending her lineage in my own way. Her example shaped how I think about fragmentation, reclamation, and repair. Instead of feeling weighed down by history, I find a lot of energy in that sense of continuity.

R: Across your practice, there’s a recurring interest in systems—grids, tiles, reliefs—that structure and fragment the image. What is it about this visual logic that continues to intrigue you?

R: I think I’ve always loved New York for its adherence to the grid. There’s something comforting about that structure—it’s the same kind of order I seek in my work. The grid isn’t just a formal device; it’s a way of grounding myself. My most focused, embodied studio time happens when I’m placing fragments together into that gridded space, and can sense that point when a new form locks into place.

Ruby Sky Stiler Artist with Bather, 2025 Canvas, acrylic, pencil, jade, and adhesive on panel 44 x 50 in( 111.8 x 127cm) 487 / 8 x 52 x 33/8 in framed ( 124.1 x 132.1 x 8.6 cm framed). Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York, © 2025 Ruby Sky Stiler

R: You’ve spoken about your background in printmaking as central to how you think through layering, repetition, and texture. How do those early lessons continue to inform your approach to painting and relief today?

R: My early experience with printmaking—and the limitations of working in two dimensions—set up a problem that still drives my work today, which is about how to expand the flat image into space. My undergrad degree was in printmaking, at a school that wasn’t especially interdisciplinary, so I had to come up with my own ways to pull sculptural forms out of the flat plane. Later, in grad school for sculpture, that question stayed with me—and it still does.

R: The process of collage—cutting, assembling, recombining—feels integral to your thinking. What does collage mean to you beyond its technique? Do you see it as a philosophy, perhaps, even an ethics, in how you engage with material and history?

R: My process is really about bringing together disparate parts to make a whole. I think of that act as a hopeful, even loving gesture—finding a way to bring the figure to life out of fragments that are incomplete or imperfect. There’s something in that process that mirrors daily life: the constant effort to make things work, even when you don’t have all the ideal resources. For me, collage isn't just a technique—it’s a mindset of repair, adaptation, and possibility. Experimenting with materials is central to that. I’m always inventing, refining, and reworking how I build things, and those breakthrough moments with my hands in the process are honestly my favorite part of it all.

Ruby Sky Stiler Three Blue Women, 2025 Canvas, acrylic, pencil, jade, and adhesive on panel 44 x 50 in (111.8 x 127 cm) 48 7/8 x 52 x 3 3/8 in framed (124.1 x 132.1 x 8.6 cm framed) Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York © 2025 Ruby Sky Stiler

R: Your figures often appear mid-transformation—emerging, dissolving, or caught between states. What do these moments of transition reveal about how you think of identity, embodiment, or narrative in your work?

R: I’m interested in how women have so often been represented as frozen—captured in a single, flawless moment. I want to push against that by including the other sides of our dimensional experience and allowing women to live, to shift, to breathe. My approach to figuration has developed over years of experimentation. I started by borrowing iconography from all over—ancient sculpture, vintage fashion illustration, Cubism, Louise Nevelson’s assemblage, even kids’ cartoons. Those references keep evolving, and out of that mix, my own visual language has taken shape. I often use geometric drawing tools to break the figure down to its most elemental forms. Those simplified shapes feel universal, but they also create space for complexity—for figures that hold both strength and vulnerability, stillness and motion, flaw and vitality.

Ruby Sky Stiler, Father holding Child, 2025 Canvas, acrylic, pencil, jade and adhesive on panel 44 x 34 in (111.8 x 86.4 cm) 48 7/8 x 35 7/8 x 3 3/8 in framed (124.1 x 91.1 x 8.6 cm framed) Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York © 2025 Ruby Sky Stiler

R: The title references the academic exercise of life drawing, yet the exhibition feels like a reimagining of that tradition. How do you see Long Pose negotiating the power dynamics of looking, particularly in relation to the classical nude and the act of observation itself?

R: The title Long Pose nods to the life drawing room, but it also points to endurance and presence. For centuries, women were mostly seen as subjects, not creators, and often excluded from those academic spaces. I’m very aware of that history, and my work tries to complicate it by imagining women as makers—rejecting idealized nudes and exploring new possibilities. These pieces are stories of women using their paint palettes as tools of resistance, invention, and self-definition.

Ruby Sky Stiler Large Blue Mother, 2025 Canvas, acrylic, pencil, jade, and adhesive on panel 44 x 50 in (111.8 x 127 cm) 48 7/8 x 52 x 3 3/8 in framed (124.1 x 132.1 x 8.6 cm framed) Courtesy the artist and Alexander Gray Associates, New York © 2025 Ruby Sky Stiler

R: The bas-relief mural encircling the space seems to function both as architecture and image. How did the idea for that continuous form develop, and what did it open up for you conceptually about space, movement, or the viewer’s body?

R: With the exhibition's titular sculpture Long Pose, I wanted to create a bas-relief mural that unifies my paintings while also shaping the space around them. I first explored this idea in my exhibition New Patterns at the Tang Teaching Museum, where I discovered how a continuous form could take control of a room and make it my own. Finished in a warm, earthen red, the piece nods to the macho history of monumental sculpture—artists like Richard Serra or Mark di Suvero—but quietly inverts it. It offers openness and movement, literally––by leaving the floor free. The caryatid-inspired figures suggest resilience, transforming a historically gendered symbol of support into something universal and alive.

 For more information about Ruby’s artwork, please visit their site here. They can also be found on Instagram here. The magazine also did a feature on her most recent exhibition, which can be found here.