I’m Ruth, and I’m a geologist, therapist, author and interdisciplinary artist.

I think about rocks a lot. I believe that human and earth processes are one and the same. We are mapped together. We find each other time and again through deep listening and resonance.

My work is in service to the oldest of questions: how to live, before we die.

How can we think, feel and move in such a way that fosters a reverence, fascination and creative curiosity for the ‘long process’ of our lives and its transitions? How can we live more deeply, truthfully, and in better companionship and guardianship with the natural world, on which we depend and to which we belong? How are we to live in personal and climate-level collapse? What is the role of empathy? How can we listen better? What kind of human life becomes possible when we actively participate in building a relationship with the Earth, especially the geological?

I see my evolving body of work as an ecology of relational pathways around a mountain. The geological is how I think, and it’s where I am always drawn. I hold a PhD in Himalayan Geology, and other postgraduate degrees in Creative Writing (MA) and Counselling and Psychotherapy (MSc). These are the central braids of my work, from which I weave and continually orient. I undertake regular trainings in support of my work, have a daily sound meditation practice, and I travel often for work and research.

My art practice isn’t one that easily fits into categories. Neither is it one of exhibition. Instead, it is a way of exploring the world, and discovering knowledge. Working primarily with words, photographic imagery and occasionally short film, I am interested in themes of geological intimacy, interspecies relational depth, deep listening and resonance. My work is primarily sited, place-based and ephemeral - from dance through to temporary installation. I work with my own body through principles of contact improvisation, and I try to elevate non-extractive practices. I work with emergent process, exploring what arises in places that draw me towards them, in conversation with them. This is almost always in mountain terrains and uplands, reflective of my lifelong work in mountain environments.

Since 2014, I have been following the work of the Rewilding Europe projects after a profound encounter with reintroduced bison in the Carpathian Mountains. In 2023, I took a four month sabbatical to travel between the Rewilding Europe landscapes of the Iberian Highlands (Spain), Central Apennine's (Italy), Velebit (Croatia), and the Affric Highlands (Scotland). In spring 2025, I undertook creative field work on Mount Etna and Stromboli, Sicily. If I am not up a mountain, I am in the far north and arctic.