Simple images in black and white, the figures in Eleanor Rufty’s drawings look like they’re waiting. The modestly clad women appear pensive, perhaps bored; the men’s expressions are equally baffling. All seem to want to say something, however.

“The ‘narrative’ occurs within the mind, often with a complexity – and specificity – that belies the simplicity or elusiveness of the image,” the artist and Richmonder writes in her artist’s statement. “It is within this mysterious and unpredictable connection of image to viewer that my interest in narrative exists – not in storytelling per se.”

This drawing, and others by Richmond artist Eleanor Rufty, will be on display in the Babcock Fine Arts Center Gallery.An exhibit of pastel and charcoal drawings by Rufty will be on display Aug. 18 through Oct. 14 in the Babcock Fine Arts Center Gallery at Sweet Briar College. Admission is free.

SBC studio art professor Laura Pharis said she has been waiting “ages” for a Rufty exhibit at Sweet Briar. She described the artist’s work as “very reflective” and said the “compositions are really amazing and the subject matter is very evocative, too, about personalities, relationships, families, couples.”

Of Rufty, Ashley Kistler, curator at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond, writes, “[Her] characters are capable of holding fast the imagination, of sparking multiple readings, and of instilling in the viewer the same sense of reverie that most often seems to hold them in thrall.

“Contemplating her drawings, in other words, propels us into that pleasurable state of being lost in our own thoughts.”

This fall, Rufty also will serve as the Sweet Briar Fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst County. As such, she will assist is some of the College’s drawing classes.

“I think the students … will be really inspired by her work,” Pharis said. “A lot of times, if you can show them women artists as role models, and the work that she does being about women, it’s great because there’s a natural ‘in’ there. … To see someone who’s made a life of this. When I was a student, they were all guys.”

A 1958 graduate of Richmond Professional Institute – now Virginia Commonwealth University – Rufty has been on the faculty at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ Studio School since 1973.

Her work has appeared in dozens of solo and group shows in Virginia, North Carolina, New York City, Washington, D.C., Florida, Scotland, England, Wales and Peru. Her most recent solo exhibition was in the fall of 2006 at the 1708 Gallery in Richmond.

Of that exhibit, 1708 Gallery development director Aimee Koch said, “Eleanor Rufty’s exhibition … was wonderfully moving with unbelievable emotion tucked in each charcoal line.”

Rufty’s work also can be seen in numerous public and corporate collections, including the Virginia State Legislature, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, among others.

In addition to her upcoming fellowship at the VCCA, Rufty was awarded the Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts in 2002, Virginia Artist of the Year in 1995 and the Mid-Atlantic/NEA Regional Fellowship in 1994.

Gallery hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Sunday, Monday and Friday and 1 to 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Also, a reception and gallery talk by the artist will be held 4 to 6 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 5. Admission is free and the public is invited.

For more information, contact Nancy McDearmon, SBC galleries registraral assistant, at 381-6547 or nmcdearmon@sbc.edu.

— By Suzanne Ramsey, SBC staff writer