Edit Before Send v3

Edit Before Send Final v3, Acrylics on canvas, October 2023, POA

Inaugural Work

The 'Edit Before Send' collection is an intimate exploration of emotional volatility and the psychological price of public composure, directly challenging the need to be "marketable and easier to digest." This foundational work is the first canvas Rūta Ashcroft has professionally framed, establishing it as a piece of exceptional, milestone provenance.

The Three Stages of Finality: Coded Layers

The creation of this inaugural piece is structured around three distinct, recorded layers, named after the corporate practice of document version control: Final v1, Final v2, and Final v3. This coded language helps spectators and collectors understand the artistic process as a psychological audit.

The canvas is presented to the viewer as Final v3 first because individuals often feel self-conscious sharing their true desires, personalities, and motives. The Final v3 layer is the socially acceptable mask, designed to avoid worrying anyone and to present a calm, predictable facade.

• Final v1 (The Unmediated): The first physical layer on the canvas is the raw, unedited emotional truth—an incredibly emotive and explosive initial version, painted rapidly with acrylics using the artist's bare hands.

• Final v2 (The Intervened): Triggered by the external, worried reaction of the artist's husband, this second layer involves consciously concealing the turmoil with brighter, happier, and more structured colours. This is the first significant edit, representing the societal pressure to mask, but more importantly, the nourishing and stabilising influence of her marriage. This partnership serves as a safe, transformative space that pulls her out of a depressed and anxious state.

• Final v3 (The Presentable): This is the latest and final physical layer of paint, presented for external viewing. It is the public performance of composure and recovery—the final, edited document.

Conceptual and Commercial Rarity

The distinction in editioning is paramount to the work's concept:

• The original, layered canvas (Final v3) is the singular, framed artwork available for acquisition. Its status as the artist's first professionally framed work ensures its unique historical value.

• The underlying layers (Final v1 and Final v2) were digitally photographed before they were painted over. These archival images of the hidden emotional stages are available exclusively as prints (as pi.

Crucially, these prints are not reproductions of the finished art. They are primary archival documents, captured spontaneously on a personal mobile camera by the artist and her husband. This choice deliberately rejects the sterility of a high-resolution professional scan, lending the prints an irreplaceable intimacy and immediacy. They serve as conceptual evidence, authenticating the vulnerability of the Final v1 (The raw, explosive moment) and the Final v2 (The personal, transformative intervention), ensuring the collector acquires not just an image, but a direct visual transcript of the artwork's hidden emotional history.

The Unvarnished Truth

The conceptual paradox is crystallised in the materiality: the final canvas is intentionally left unvarnished. By refusing the ultimate protective edit of preservation, Ashcroft ensures the canvas remains vulnerable and subject to change. The unvarnished surface signifies that the healing process is ongoing and never perfectly finalised.

Ashcroft demonstrates that true power lies not just in the initial emotional truth, but in the radical honesty to present a layered reality that honors the struggle, the sanctuary, and the continuous, "unedited" process of becoming.