Faculty of Art

Drawing and Painting

Ruby Döern

In The Realm Of Eternal Stories

A work in Hör zu, ich erzähle dir was / “Listen, I’ll tell you something.” a series of oil paintings depicting a variety of animals specific to stories from the artists’ ancestry across Central Europe.

“In The Realm Of Eternal Stories, comes from Linz, Austria where my O Oma lived until she was 16, travelling to Germany with her husband to escape post war Central Europe in 1949. She stayed in a refugee camp in Bremen for a year until boarding a ship to Quebec, Canada. This painting is about a Lindwurm dragon named Lenzibald built as a “Grottenbahn” grotto train in 1906, who transports its visitors through the grotto into a colourful world displaying fairy-tales. Miniature and lifesize scenes from children’s tales originating from Austria and Germany are displayed throughout the ride, from stories of Snow White, Rubezahl, Hansel and Gretel, and the Musicians of Bremen. The background is my memory of the patterns my O Oma sewed, with the prominent colours of red and green throughout the painting as those are the colours of Lenzibald the dragon. ”