Starroot grew up in Southern Germany and started to create art at an early age, inspired by nature and her unlimited fantasy. She explored and practiced conscious dreaming in her early childhood. She is a completely self-taught artist. When she was 30 years old, she had a life changing Out of Body experience in a car accident. Starroot opened more and more for visions coming to her. In 1986 she moved with her two children to Tennessee and then to the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia.
Due to an illness in 1992 she started painting her healing visions, a series of over 50 large paintings in acrylic and ink on canvas and wood. Spirit Beings such as aliens, angels, ferries and totem animals appear in her visions of vibrating bright colors. She calls this series "Arcturian Dreams." Now she has created over 900 paintings, most of them showing visions from dreams. In 1999 she broke down with a serious back injury and severe pain. In a hospital bed she finished over 26 paintings, new Visions, that came for her healing. They are in her book "Amanita Dreams" together with Starroot’s visionary poetry. She also just recently released her first art music and art video "Visionquest", her art book JAM ON MARS is now available, you can check on her webpage under News where you can get a copy of the book.
Starroot has sold many paintings to collectors in Germany and the US and exhibited in the Rock Cafe in San Francisco (at the same time as Jerry Garcia had his art on a wall there) and in New York at the Liechtenstein studio and countless art festivals, most Floydfests.
In 1997 she was invited to exhibit 40 of her large paintings at the art department of Radford University in VA. She also was invited to teach students about her visionary approach to art and to speak at a Huichol symposium as a Huichol related artist. One collector bought 165 of Starroot's original paintings of her SPIRIT ANIMAL series. Starroot has been showing her art on the Internet since 1995. Two of Starroot's orignal paintings are in the permanent collection of the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. Her painting MIRROR GODDESS hung there at a recent one year show called "ALL THINGS ROUND" eyballs, karma, galaxies.
Two of Starroot's original paintings are now in the permanent collection of the Radford University Art Museum. “Birth of Red Cosmic Dragon” (1994)and
" Deer Spirit"
extended label from the Radford Museum:
“Birth of the Red Cosmic Dragon” is one of a series of paintings titled “Arcturian Dreams”by the Bavarian-born artist/poet/musician
Ruth Neumann, aka “Starroot,” who moved tthe US with her children in 1986—first toTennessee, and soon thereafter to southwestVirginia. She is now a longtime resident ofFloyd County, and has become known as one
of the region’s leading “Visionary” or“Outsider” artists.
According to Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum (which includes works by Starroot in its permanent collection), Visionary Art is “…produced by self-taught individuals, usually without formal training, whose works arise from an innate personal vision that revels foremost in the creative act itself.” Starroot can also be considered an“Outsider” artist—a term coined in 1972 by the British art critic/scholar, Roger Cardinal,
in response to France’s “Art Brut” (Raw Art) movement. “Outsider” artists are generallyidentified as talented individuals who lack formal training and avoid engaging with the mainstream art conventions and institutions. Other notable outsider artists include North India’s Nek Chand, Simon Rodia of East Los Angeles, and Howard Finster of Georgia.Here in Southwest Virginia, it was Radford University’s Prof. Art Jones (a longtime Chairof the RU’s Art Department) who was the first art scholar to recognize Starroot’s accomplishments. According to Jones:
“In the mid 1990s, I had the pleasure to get acquainted with Starroot—whose
dynamic visionary art is genuinely compelled by strong inner-necessary drives. I soon offered her an exhibition in the Art Department’s gallery, where I also shot a video interview with the artist surrounded by her amazing paintings. Over the years, I often used the video when teaching courses on self-taught and outsider art. I’m so delighted that two of her dazzling paintings are now in the Radford University Art Museum.”
Earlier this year, Starroot donated this and another painting—titled “Deer Spirit”—to RU Art Museum. Both pictures feature visual allusions to Mayan hieroglyphs along with thematic and aesthetic inspiration drawn from Mexico’s Wixárika yarn paintings— reflecting the artist’s longstanding engagement with indigenous American art and religion. In 2024, Starroot’s work will be shown at RU Art Museum’s Tyler Gallery, in an exhibition titled “Iyari: Heart-Memory in the Art of Robert Forman & Starroot.”
Starroot has been painting many custom paintings for patrons in her style
Starroot continuously opens up for positive visions and gives them form in new paintings and new songs. Starroot has been a musician and songwriter all her life. She studied music therapy for children with Gertrud Orff, the daughter of famous composer Carl Orff. She performed and recorded her music solo and with various bands in Germany and the US. Her music ranges from world folk spirit songs to ambient alien trance music and kids songs. She released her first audio tape FOLLOW THE LIGHT in 1990 and got reviews calling her the "female Donavan". Starroot released 2 psycho active Dreamspell Mayan Calendar related CDs YELLOW MAGNETIC SUN and RED COSMIC DRAGON. She also has a band for children songs SOMERSAULT, her kid's CD is called SUNNY SIDE UP. Starroot opened up the first LEAF festival with her 8 piece Galactic Band and played on Hills Holler Stage on Floydfest 1, her Kids band Somersault has been performing at many Floydfests.
Starroot's recently hosted an Internet Radio show TIME IS ART with many of her original Folk songs, Reggeas and her galactic music at www.eternaljamnationradio.com
Her "FOREVER NOW Band" has been performing at many music festivals and can be booked now. Her CDs you can purchase on her Etsy Starroot Gallery.
You can join Starroot on her facebook fan page "Starroot" Artist site to get brand new updates on new paintings and art shows and her FOREVER NOW BAND facebook site to find out all about her band and original music and performances.
If you are interested in my original paintings, custom paintings, signed Giclee prints on canvas, matted prints or my art poetry book JAM ON MARS, my music video VISION Quest or my art postcards or art pendants, just contact me per email: sternenwurzel@gmail.com or call at 540-922-2890 or check on Etsy.
Starroot continues to paint her visionary art, every dot filled with Love, Peace, Hope and Jarmony.
