Rose Ruane
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regretteruane.bsky.social
Rose Ruane
@regretteruane.bsky.social
11K followers 3.4K following 7.9K posts
Artist, writer, sweetheart, battleaxe, she/her
Novels This Is Yesterday & Birding with Corsair Books
Rep: Becky Thomas at Lewinsohn Literary
Chair of The Adamson Collection Trust: work created in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital during the C20th
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regretteruane.bsky.social
Walking in low winter sun, dazzled in both senses: beauty & blinding feels related to the impossible act of seeing ourselves head on, how often insight arrives aslant, the sharp clarifying prism of encountering self as stranger, a breathtaking tenderness Marie Howe articulates In What The Living Do
Text of Marie Howe’s poem What the Living Do, which reads Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably fell down there. And the Drano won't work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes have piled up waiting for the plumber I still haven't called. This is the everyday we spoke of. It's winter again: the sky's a deep, headstrong blue, and the sunlight pours through the open living-room windows because the heat's on too high in here and I can't turn it off. For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking, I've been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: this is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning. What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to pass. We want whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss-we want more and more and then more of it. But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass, say, the window of the corner video store, and I'm gripped by a cherishing so deep for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you.
November 16, 2025 at 12:22 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Low, bright Sunday light feels like Kodachromes of distant relatives, BBC continuity cards of sun through frosty teasels, staticky folk records.
Reminded me of this photo my dad took the day an adoption society worker arrived me with wrapped in her fur coat.
Maybe I’m reluctantly writing about it
A photo taken across multiple adjoining back garden on a very cold looking day with frost on the lawns and on a field beyond, there are sheds and greenhouses and bare trees, the roofs of other houses and far away in the hazy distance, the skyline of a city. The patina of the photo makes it clear it is from the 1970s and it has been taken by an amateur photographer so the angle is a little squint and part of the window frame through which the photo has been taken in visible
November 16, 2025 at 9:55 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Another gorgeous Jill McDonald illustration for an exquisite exercise in imagining.
One for @wildobliquities.bsky.social
Page from a primary school English textbook with a lovely illustration of two white ducks with yellow bills and feet among leafy plants with Noah’s ark balanced on Mount Ararat in the background under text which reads The Prayer of the Little Ducks Who Went into the Ark Dear God, give us a flood of water. Let it rain tomorrow and always. Give us plenty of little slugs and other luscious things to eat. Protect all folk who quack and everyone who knows how to swim. Amen. Carmen Bernos de Gasztold (translated by Rumer Godden) MORE TO DO Choose to be any other creature in the Ark. Draw the pictures for a T.V. programme about its voyage, and write the commentary for it.
November 15, 2025 at 11:24 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Recently acquired Puffin Post with a lovely illustration by Pauline Baynes, whose best known work is the original cover for Watership Down
Cover of a Puffin Post magazine featuring a not quite entirely realistic but not quite cartoonish illustration of a puffin looking at some just blossoming yellow crocuses. It is standing above a cutaway of the earth underneath its feet in which insects travel through their tunnels among the roots of the plants above. To the left a tree and the thorny tendril of a bramble bush, to the right another puffin flying down, coming into land against a green sky under the title written in yellow and orange. The flying puffin has a speech bubble saying “built any good nests lately?” The standing puffin has one which says “what’s this then” and a crocus is replying “spring”
November 14, 2025 at 2:48 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Texting a photo of my cute new blouse to the group chat asking if it clashes with the ducking stool
A black and white etching of Matthew Hopkins revealing witches and their familiars
November 14, 2025 at 2:09 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Oooo remembers being unencumbered by the torment of consciousness?
Peter Kay pointing
November 14, 2025 at 11:08 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Not just livid but disgusted, not just disgusted but offended. Maybe it was my song choice, but I suspect it is my very being that Carwash was objecting to
A fluffy black cat with yellow eyes sitting on a table with an orange cloth looking up at the camera with a sweet but sceptical expression A fluffy black cat with yellow eyes sitting on a table with an orange cloth looking up at the camera mouth open meowing angrily
November 11, 2025 at 11:05 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Was really struck by what a lovely inspiring exercise this is, like a primary school version of Mary Oliver’s Instructions for living a life
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it
Page from a 1960s primary school English textbook with a lovely cartoonish illustration of a red haired white girl in blue shirt looking at a cockatoo on a black perch. It is in the centre bottom and takes up about a third of the page, above is black serif text which reads Have you ever noticed? Every day we "see" things without really looking at them at all. On the way to and from school look at just one thing that you have often passed but never looked at very closely - it may be a street lamp, a small plant in a hedgerow, someone's front gate, the wall and windows of an ofice building, the balcony of a house, an object in a shop window. You are a secret service agent, and exact knowledge of this object is your password. Your life depends on it. Learn it by heart, and then describe it to the fellow agent who has to test you by your knowledge.
November 10, 2025 at 9:35 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
30 million dead, The Somme, painting created by Mary Bishop 1976 in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital where she was compelled to live.
Aged 4 when her father was killed in WWI, the reverberations of his death & her mother’s vast grief traumatised & distressed Mary for the rest of her life
A painting of diagonal slashes and crosses of various kinds all filling the white page in red paint of varying intensity. In tiny scratching handwriting the words 30 million dead July 76 M Bishop The Somme
November 9, 2025 at 10:48 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Nice charity shop find earlier, this atmospheric, elegant little charcoal and watercolour work, a shade of the uneasy & uncanny about it that I find quite compelling, a pall of gloom, something brooding
A charcoal and watercolour picture of a small child or cherub standing in a brown river surrounded by greenery and trees with verdant hills in the background, under a brooding grey sky, drawn and painted in loose marks, built up to give depth and dimension, not quite impressionistic but not fully realistic either
November 8, 2025 at 6:03 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Painting created by Brenda Marshall c.1957 in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, Surrey, where she was compelled to live.
A substantial number of her works survive, they explore painful & traumatic family relationships, details of which are sometimes noted on the backs of her paintings
Painting of a white woman with shoulder length brown hair, wearing a red dress, viewers from behind. She is in a room with pale yellow walls and a chequerboard floor, her hand is raised towards the window in front of her, through which a tree lined street of terraced houses can be seen. On the wall to her right is an oval portrait of a woman with an angry expression. The perspectives in the painting jar with each other and it creates an atmosphere of strangeness and vertiginousness
November 8, 2025 at 9:49 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Beautiful Jill McDonald front and back covers for this 1960s primary school English textbook, filled with lovely, thoughtful invitations to imagine, play with poems and write short creative pieces
The cover of a slim primary school English education textbook with the title one world and another, English for juniors and author name Margaret Greaves in black serf font on the right above the word spring in white, against a bright blue background representing sky. To the left, a lovely cartoonish illustration of a barn owl, a brown dog wearing a gold astronaut outfit , a little grey mouse and black haired witch in purple pointed hat and cloak in a leafy tree The back cover of a primary school English textbook with a bright and cartoonish illustration of crow wearing a yellow and red three pointed jester’s hat with bells on it, a smiling grey cat and a brown rooster with red coxcomb sitting in a leafy green tree against a bright blue sky, to the left a rainbow arcs from bottom left to centre
November 7, 2025 at 2:53 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Twenty minutes time
Gert Neumann’s Elf Uber with added beans in the hope of delighted Kirkers
November 5, 2025 at 10:38 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Weather report
The cover of an album called someone stole my happy songs by Helen Randell featuring a white woman with blonde bouffant hair wearing a brown dress looking sad on a wooden bridge with a waterfall behind her on a grey day
November 5, 2025 at 10:01 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
There’s a post the oldest selfie from your phone thing going round & I find the oldest selfie on mine is this one from 2017, taken in Philip Larkin’s shaving mirror, from a never completed project I was working on at the time, photographing my reflection & shadow in/on famous men’s possessions
Selfie of rose, a middle aged, white, midsize woman with pink hair in a beehive and big silver hooped earrings taken in a circular mirror against some patterned fabric
November 4, 2025 at 4:35 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
This perfect duffer is trying out for the role of spokesmodel for this wonder by @drjamesbailey.bsky.social which I’m so looking forward to reading
A black cat lying on a pink floral quilt next to a copy of a book with a red and pink cover called like a cat loves a bird featuring half of cat’s face which bears a great resemblance to the cat in the photo
November 2, 2025 at 1:24 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Painting created c.1949 in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital, by an individual who was compelled to live there, currently identified to us only as Drew.
This is their only surviving work & no biographical information is currently known to us
Watercolour painting of black pews in a church, with silver and red finials, and a gold and red archway open to a red sky outside, the atmosphere is somehow serene and foreboding at the same time
November 2, 2025 at 9:39 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Now watching
Title screen of a tv show: centred across the bottom in white sans serif capitals the words a woman sobbing, above it a shadowy white framed dormer window of a house in deep darkness
November 1, 2025 at 10:01 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
October 31, 2025 at 3:54 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Philip Larkin’s this be the verse mangled into Ozymandias, the text reads They Oz you up, your mandyias. They may not mean to, but they do. They give you vast and trunkless legs A sunken shattered visage too. But they were Ozzed up in their turn By Mandyias upon the sand Who half the time had wrinkled lips And half in sneering cold command. Oz hands on mandyias to man. Like mighty works atop a shelf Look on them early as you can Ye mighty and despair yourself
October 30, 2025 at 3:49 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
An experiment in using soil & glue as material just for my own curiosity resulted in…this, whatever it is.
Was thinking about Homer Sykes’ photos & Here We Come A’ Wassailing, imaging an ancient Earth spirit adorning herself in things she perceived as human from the Sutton Hoo helmet to Love Island
A folk horror looking mask of humanoid face made of soil with little white flowers growing out of it crowned in wheat and reads and dried flowers lying on a hot pink quilt A folk horror looking mask of humanoid face made of soil with little white flowers growing out of it crowned in wheat and reads and dried flowers lying on a hot pink quilt held by a white left hand
October 30, 2025 at 1:12 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Painting created c.midC20th in the art therapy studio at Netherne hospital in Surrey, by an individual who was compelled to live there, whose identity is currently unknown to us.
This image is from art therapist Edward Adamson’s lecture slides: the original is missing, presumed lost
Painting: head and shoulders of a white woman with curly brown shoulder length hair, in profile facing right. Inside her a second profile like an anatomical drawing, skull and some musculature drawn in, from the top of their shared head a curled horn or shoot emerges, the style is almost like a panel from a comic book
October 30, 2025 at 9:31 AM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Irresponsibly posting my location on social media
A blue and white French street sign which reads place del balls
October 28, 2025 at 9:18 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
But Doctor, I am Vintage Original Oil Painting Clown Golf Scene Signed F. Durell Vintage Humorous
Screenshot of an eBay listing which reads Vintage Original Oil Painting Clown Golf Scene Signed F. Durell Vintage Humorous
October 28, 2025 at 6:26 PM
regretteruane.bsky.social
Wrong planet but
The “always has been” meme of one astronaut pointing a gun are back of another’s head in front of the Earth seen from space
October 28, 2025 at 2:09 PM