Rutland was born in Lee County and reared on farms in Coryell and Nueces counties. She had several short periods of formal training under Cyril Kay-Scott, Xavier Gonzalez, Frederick Taubes, and Donald Pierce in summer workshops in Corpus Christi; she received informal advice from Lenora McNess Smith. Rutland painted occasionally in Mexico and Colorado but specialized in works depicting genre scenes (particularly mules and horses) on her farm near Robstown in Nueces County. She moved in the 1970s from her farm to nearby Kingsville were she died. She was buried in Robstown.
Exhibitions: Edgar B. Davis Competition, San Antonio (1929); Texas Federation of Women's Clubs, Lubbock (1931 honorable mention); Southern States Art League Annual Exhibition (1933, 1935, 1937-38); Isaac Delgado Museum of Art, New Orleans (1935 and 1937 one-woman); Witte Memorial Museum, San Antonio (1933, 1935, and 1937 one-woman); Texas Centennial Exhibition, Dallas (1936); Annual Southeast Texas Artists Exhibition, Houston (1937 honorable mention, 1939); Annual Texas Artist Circuit Exhibition (1938, 1943, 1946, 1949, 1951-52); Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin (1939 and 1949 one-woman); Texas General Exhibition (1940-41, 1943-47, 1948 award); South Texas Art League (1940, 1948-58, 1963, 1965 awards); Corpus Christi Art Guild/South Texas Art League Joint Exhibition (1940, 1943); Texas-Oklahoma General Exhibition (1941); Texas Printmakers Circuit Exhibition (1942-45, 1948); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1942); International Prints and Drawings Exhibition, Elisabet Ney Museum, Austin (1943); Texas Fine Arts Association Exhibition (1943, 1951-52, 1958, 1963, 1967); Annual Texas Print Exhibition, Dallas (1943 award, 19484); Corpus Christi Caller-Times Annual Exhibition (1944-46, 1947 prize); Corpus Christ Art Foundation Annual Exhibition (1946 prize, 1947, 1948 honorable mention, 1949 prize, 1950 award, 1952 prize, 1955 prize); Texas College of Arts and Industries, Kingsville (1947 and 1957 one-woman); Centennial Museum, Corpus Christi (1947 and 1953 one-woman); South Texas Fair, Kingsville (1948 prize); Exhibition of Prints from the Corpus Christi Art Foundation Permanent Collection, Centennial Museum, Corpus Christi (1948); Trinity University, San Antonio (1949 one-woman); Laguna Gloria Art Museum, Corpus Christi (1949 one-woman); Texas Watercolor Society (1950-52, 1954-55, 1959, 1962, 1965); Texas Painting and Sculpture Annual Exhibition (1959); Texas Printmakers, 1940-1965, Meadows Museum, Southern Methodist University, Dallas (1990); Women Artists of Texas 1850-1950, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon (1993); Our Own Artists (1944-1972), Art Museum of South Texas, Corpus Christi (1997).