Ruby Waage Townsend (b.1996) is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Leicester, UK. Focusing on themes such as identity, trauma, and domestic environments, the artist seeks to make the ephemeral tangible through the medium of paint. Brought up in the UK, from Dutch heritage, she intertwines folklore with lived experiences of abuse alongside familial stories, filtering reality through mythology, examining facades and illusions, judgement and surveillance. Looking to artists such as Judith Leyster, Paula Rego and Lubaina Himid, she explores time, boundaries and the boundless. The artist is fascinated the with archetypal binary nature of fairy tales, subverting this to explore messy ambiguities and the role of the narrator. Becoming the main character in her own book, utilising the self-portrait as she encompasses all roles, both protagonist and antagonist.