Ruby Palmer was born in Boston, MA and grew up in rural Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

Trained as an abstract painter at Hampshire College (1988-92) she started experimenting with sculpture and installation at the School of Visual Arts in NYC (MFA 1998-2000) as a way to work larger and directly with the architecture of the room. In 1999 she was awarded a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant for Painters and Sculptors.
Her work includes drawing, painting, sculpture, installation, and wood constructions.

Ruby had a solo exhibition, “Assembly”, at Morgan Lehman Gallery in NYC in May-June 2021. She was included in the Mohawk Regional Juried Exhibition at Opalka Gallery in Albany in Fall 2021, and was awarded the Chet and Karen Opalka Award. Ruby has exhibited work at the Albany International Airport (2020), Opalka Gallery in Albany (2020, 2021) Woodstock Byrdcliff Guild, Woodstock, NY (2021), LABspace in Hillsdale, NY, The Foundation Gallery at Columbia-Greene Community College (2019), Jeff Bailey Gallery in Hudson, NY (2018), the Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz, NY, Morgan Lehman Gallery in NY, Page Bond Gallery in Richmond VA, Geoffrey Young Gallery in MA, Instar Lodge in Germantown NY, and Smack Mellon in Brooklyn, among others.

Her work is in many private collections as well as the corporate collections of Fidelity Bank and Capital One.

In 2016, Ruby founded ARTalks, an artist lecture series held at the Morton Memorial Library in Rhinecliff, NY which featured two contemporary Hudson Valley artists presenting their work. Ruby has lived in Rhinecliff, NY since 2011. Her studio is in the Chocolate Factory in nearby Red Hook.