Ruth Burden was born and educated in Worcester. She studied at the Birmingham college of Art under Bernard Fleetwood-Walker and Katherine Fryer. She completed her training at the Bath Academy under the tutelage of Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon and William Scott (who considered her to be his star pupil). She stayed on there as a teacher before taking on similar positions in Warwick and then Oxford. She moved back to Worcester in the 1970s, setting up her studio in an elegant Georgian house on Britannia Square.

 

She exhibited extensively throughout her career at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, the Royal West of England Academy, the New English Art Club and the Women's International Art Club.

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Her work can be found in private, corporate and public collections including the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham.

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An interesting obituary in the Guardian can be read here