painter, printmaker, potter, weaver and art teacher, was born on 7 September 1900 in Ballina on the north coast of NSW, daughter of William Benson Ainsworth and Elizabeth, née Drummond. Soon afterwards the family moved to Sydney; she grew up at Warrawee on Sydney’s Upper North Shore. In 1921 she began a BA at the University of Sydney, studying English, History and Philosophy. She commuted daily to university, a time-consuming trip in the days before the Harbour Bridge.
Feeling a need for some artistic content to her life, towards the end of 1922 she enrolled part-time at Julian Ashton 's Sydney Art School where she studied with Thea Proctor and Henry Gibbons . Early the next year Ruth and her sister Fay were taken overseas by their aunt, the opera singer Lute Drummond. They attended a Theosophical conference in Wales where Ruth met Rudolph Steiner and visited many major orchestral and operatic events and galleries and all the modern art shows. Ruth was astounded by the Cubist and Surrealist works she saw and her lifelong interest in the ideas underlying modern art was established. On returning to Australia Ainsworth abandoned her degree and enrolled full-time at Ashton’s. Teaching methods were traditional and the approach to art conservative; Ashton was no adherent of modernism. However, Proctor, however, began teaching privately in 1926 and Ainsworth became one of her students and admirers. From Proctor she developed her interest in linocuts.
In 1928 Ainsworth decided to take up teaching as a career and became art mistress at Frensham, a private girls’ school at Mittagong. She recalls that being a teacher there involved giving time to activities other than the curriculum. For her, as for all the teachers, it was a way of life as part of a community. In taking this step, she abandoned a possible career as a practicing artist. She recognised this and made the decision with conviction, injecting all her energies into teaching. Through her influence Frensham students enthusiastically took to linocutting; their prints were often used to decorate concert, theatre, speech day and other program covers. At Frensham Ainsworth developed her knowledge of two other areas of art: weaving and pottery. She travelled to England in 1935 and studied weaving at Saffron Walden and the Hassocks in Sussex and pottery at the London Central School of Arts and Crafts and with Bernard Leach at St Ives. She visited Anne Dangar at Moly Sabata, where she taught basic weaving techniques to a woman working there. The equipment she brought back to Australia included a large loom, three spinning wheels and a potter’s wheel. Her teaching in these areas formed the basis of the later Sturt Craft Workshops.
Towards the end of World War II, Ainsworth left Frensham and joined the Studio Theatre in Sydney, established and run by Alice Crowther, who taught eurhythmics and drama. As well as attending classes and performing in plays she participated in most other aspects of theatre production, including set design and construction, making props and designing and making costumes. In 1953 she returned to Frensham to teach once again. She retired to Sydney in 1963 but maintained strong links with the school. She continued to be active in other areas of education and for a time led workshops on the principles of Rudolph Steiner. Her life is an expression of the joy of learning.
- Writers:
- Maxwell, Helen
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 1992
