Ed Ruscha, Inverness

About

Born in 1937 in America’s Midwest, Ed Ruscha grew up in Oklahoma City. In 1956, he enrolled at the Chouinard Art Institute, where he studied fine art alongside typesetting and graphic design. By the early 1960s, he was perceived to have to have created a new form of visual landscape combining typography with commonplace objects. Over the past half-century, Ruscha’s art has evolved in unpredictable ways. At the same time, the things that first fired his imagination – cinema and film; driving, roadside signs, and the flat, featureless landscapes of the American West; the city, filled with constant visual noise; the phenomenon of human communication and the pleasures of typography – remain the basis for his art. The drawings in this touring exhibition show the range of Ruscha’s practice and the centrality of drawing to his career.