Ruth May Pawson, 1908 – 1994
Canadian artist Ruth May Pawson was born in Stratford, Ontario, but at an early age she moved to Regina, Saskatchewan. She attended the Regina College of Art, where she studied practical art under Augustus Kenderdine and the History of Art and Art Appreciation under Professor Gordon Snelgrove.
It was while she was teaching at Davin School in Regina in 1952 that Pawson’s landscape painting ‘Late Harvest’ was selected by a committee of the National Gallery of Canada for reproduction as a silkscreen by Sampson-Matthews Limited.
The painting, a Saskatchewan harvest scene, was done along the highway west of Brora, a few miles north of Regina. The broad prairie, its scenery and moods, were a fertile source for her painting, where she strove to capture the feeling of limitless space, freedom and serenity found in the prairies.