b'mental, with contagious exuberance, no less evident in her informal stud-ies than in her fully orchestrated paintings15 feet in length.She began to make these monumental paintings a few years after she moved into her current Central Park West studio in the early 1990s. The studios proximity to Central Park acted as a powerful catalyst, despite the fact that its dimensions scarcely provided room enough for the scope of what she had in mind. Something like a cornucopia, Rut-tenbergs outlook regarding these works is panoramic and encyclope-dic. No matter how much attention she gives to every tiny detail, what matters most is the overall fullness. Like so many artists since Monet, Ruttenberg works serially, returning to the same inexhaust-ible compositional theme with variations, and in her studio the sepa-Left: Detail from watercolor Study 4.Right: Detail from Djeuner sur lHerbe, by Claude Monet, 1865-1866'