Rachel Ruff

ARTIST BIO

Rachel Ruff has worn many hats, including Emmy award-winning CNN producer, ad-agency executive, White House assistant pastry chef, author, and artist. Though she feels most at home when she's in her favorite element: painting.

At CNN, Ruff produced Emmy award winning medical documentaries and created the first-ever “World Aids Day” documentary. Ruff served as a Vice President for Porter Novelli, a worldwide advertising agency, where she used her journalistic insight and extensive CNN experience to oversee digital media and broadcast projects.

She wrote and self-published “Defriending Facebook,” a memoir on the intense pressures and addictions she fell into with social media. Her narrative details how she came dangerously close to taking her own life and how she healed herself by going offline. Ruff says, "My book was written to share my experiences to help others silently suffering online."

She holds a communications degree with a pre-medical concentration from the University of Florida. She also has a Pastry Arts degree with Honors from L’ Academie De Cuisine. After graduating, she worked for White House chefs Anne Amernick and Frank Ruta.

When Ruff was eight years old, she was trained to oil paint in the traditional Renaissance style. In her forties, Ruff’s work evolved into vivid abstracts through synesthesia; in the form of visualizing and painting colors via the vibrations of music.

She also creates pieces by channeling clients’ musings and bringing them to life on canvas using her pastry palette knives, her “dancing” fingers, and drip painting techniques onto an array of canvas mediums.

Ruff’s mantra is, “Paint like you live.”