Ruth Bauer was educated at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her work has received acclaim in Art News and in The Boston Globe. In her series, "Paintings from the Blue Peninsula," Bauer draws her inspiration from a specific box created by Joseph Cornell, dedicated to Emily Dickinson, entitled "Toward the Blue Peninsula"--after a line in a Dickinson poem, as is her plate design. Upon studying an image of Cornell's box, Bauer was struck by a long-forgotten memory from her childhood, which she translated into her own version of the blue peninsula. The notion of an ideal place, whether minimal and almost nonexistent as in the Cornell piece, or distant and unattainable as in Dickinson's poem, is what fuels many of her paintings. For fifteen years, Bauer's quiet, luminous landscapes have been featured at the Clark Gallery in several solo shows and group exhibitions.