Ruby Read is a painter working primarily in portraiture. Originally from Shrewsbury, Shropshire, she completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2025, following a First Class BA in Fine Art Painting from Camberwell College of Arts in 2024.

Her practice is driven by a sustained fascination with people. A natural observer and conversationalist, Read draws from fleeting encounters, overheard exchanges, and the small frictions of everyday interaction. Her portraits function as sites of encounter themselves, holding a tension between intimacy and confrontation, familiarity and unease.

Read works directly with oil paint squeezed straight from the tube, building thick impasto surfaces with a high-gloss, almost artificial sheen. The work carries a seductive, icing-like quality that is disrupted by exaggerated colour, dense textures, and loaded brushstrokes. Figures oscillate between attraction and distortion, their semi-grotesque intensity pushing against expectations of portraiture and taste.

Her work is informed by painters including Frank Auerbach, John Currin, and Emilio Villalba, drawing on painterly tradition while remaining rooted in contemporary concerns around surface, excess, and psychological charge.

Read has presented solo and group exhibitions across the UK, including Natural Selection (The Gallery, Shrewsbury, 2025), An Other Space (IBV Vaults, London, 2025), Past Meets Present (15 Bateman Street, Soho, 2025), Bunny Contemporary (Shoreditch, 2024), Infinite Possibilities (The Gallery, Earls Court, 2024), and En Route (Southwark Park Galleries, 2024). Earlier exhibitions include presentations at Bargehouse, OXO Tower; The Bomb Factory, Marylebone; Copeland Gallery; and Shrewsbury Museum and Art Gallery.

Her work is held in collections including the Travers Smith Collection, Rise Art Collection, and the Pilgrm Hotel Collection, and has been featured in publications such as Blowout Magazine, London Art Roundup, and Wayzgoose Magazine.