Ruth Boyles of Factoryville is shown with her painting, “Lighthouse at Dawn.” Ruth is this month’s featured artist from the Dunmore Activity Hub. 

Ruth H. Boyles of Factoryville is the September artist of the month from the Dunmore Activity Hub. She is celebrating her fourth year of painting, having begun in September 2012.

Asked where she gets her ideas, Ruth explained, “Our teacher, Jill Swersie, collects various subject matter into pictures, and one of her students, Marie Mohila, organized them into separate bins and labeled them. It gives us a a lot of material to choose from.”

Her featured painting this month is “Lighthouse at Dawn.” Ruth says, “I love lighthouses because they prevent men from perishing, and it reminds me that Jesus keeps men from the potential dangers in the storms of life by inviting them to come to Him to find safety.”

Ruth looks forward to the sketching and painting classes, and admits that when she started she could not draw at all. “The sketching class has become a discipline,” she notes, “and I find that the more I do it, I am realizing there really is an artist inside me. Jill encourages us to practice at home and carry a pad in our purses for whenever a drawing opportunity presents itself.”

In addition to Jill’s encouragement, Ruth appreciates that her instructor is careful “not to make us clones of her, but to make our work be an expression of who we are.”

Ruth says she loves the people at the Activity Hub and has formed some strong friendships with many of the members.