Ruby C. Williams painting on board, c. 1997. Signed and dated on verso. Reads 'I waited for you RCW; So Paul Came; So I left with my old love.' Ms. Williams passed away recently at the age of 94. Ms. Williams used house paint when she first started but graduated to acrylics; plywood was a favorite surface. And though some of her works reflected hard aspects of life, others were whimsical — “I skip and skip on a sunny day,” read the phrase on a painting of a young girl — or carried religious phrases that invoked her years in the ministry. In 2005 she was included in “On Their Own: Selected Works by Self-Taught African American Artists” at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum in Washington. That same year she received the Florida Folk Heritage Award, which recognizes “outstanding stewardship of Florida’s living traditions.”