RUSCHKA DU TOIT

Ruschka du Toit is a Cape Town based artist whose practice centers on expressive ink paintings of flowers and still lifes. Her work unfolds as a deeply personal and poetic inquiry into themes of melancholia, memory, sentimentality, and the quiet immanence of everyday life. Guided by nature and its symbolic vocabulary, du Toit approaches each flower as a kind of emotional cipher, less a botanical subject than a vessel for feeling and introspection. Her paintings function as portraits in their own right: tender, gestural studies that distill internal states into the contours of petals and stems.

Du Toit’s technique embraces the unpredictability of ink, allowing the medium’s fluidity and responsiveness to shape the final image. The interplay between water, movement, and drying time becomes an essential collaborator in the process, introducing moments of chance that lend the work a sense of immediacy and aliveness. This surrender to the medium mirrors the artist’s broader commitment to vulnerability and openness, cultivating a visual language that is both intimate and emotionally resonant.

Born in 1984, du Toit has steadily emerged as a distinctive voice within South Africa’s contemporary art landscape. She presented her first solo exhibition independently in 2024, and has participated in group exhibitions with Eclectica Contemporary in Cape Town and Lobster Club in Los Angeles. That same year, she was named a finalist in the Delphian Gallery Open Call and exhibited with the London-based gallery at Unit 1. With each new body of work, du Toit deepens her exploration of floral symbolism as a means of emotional communication, offering viewers meditative encounters that blur the line between observation and confession.