Ruth Ellen Hoag’s professional life didn’t begin with a paintbrush. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, she turned to watercolors and acrylics only after winding down a 30-year orchestral career that brought her — and her French horn — to venues across the country, including in New York, Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. In fact, it was while playing first horn in the orchestra in a 1975 production of West Side Story at the Lobero Theatre that Hoag met her husband, Richard.
“He was Riff, the leader of the Jets,” she recalled.
When her husband’s work took him to Japan in 1989, Hoag joined him. Little did she know that sojourn would represent the first steps toward a new career, this one as a fine artist. “I really wanted to go, but there was no point in taking my horn,” she said. “What would I do with it there? So, I left it behind, conscious of the fact that I’d probably never play professionally again.”