Gallery With A Cause • Located in the New Mexico Cancer Center • Benefitting the NMCC Foundation
Please call gallery director Regina Held to arrange a private gallery tour, make a purchase, or ask any questions.
Ruan is a lifelong New Mexico resident and Albuquerque-based artist. He began creating art at an early age, painting ceramic tiles to sell in his parents’ Santa Fe gallery. The front rooms of their Canyon Road home served as both studio and gallery. Later, he became a professional land surveyor and cartographer, a path that allowed him to combine his interests in science, graphics, and the Southwest landscape. Throughout his life, he has painted, drawn, mapped, and photographed New Mexico. Largely self-taught, with a year of formal training at the University of New Mexico, he draws on both his technical work across the state and his fine art practice to express a personal connection to the region’s landscape and culture.
Ruan was raised by artist parents that loved to travel. Alongside their example, he draws inspiration from a wide range of sources—especially Western American landscape painters and the Abstract Expressionists.
A member of Plein Air Painters of New Mexico (PAPNM) for eleven years, Ruan’s work reflects a painterly approach shaped through years of painting outdoors. Working primarily in oil, he focuses on landscapes and also creates mixed-media pieces using pen, pencil, and watercolor. His work has been featured in several solo exhibitions as well as juried and non-juried PAPNM shows.
Ruan believes that time spent in nature can reveal a shared sense of spirituality and connection, and he sees his art as a way to reflect that experience.