Craig Ruddy (1968-2022)

Artists Website | View Artwork

Craig Ruddy was an award winning contemporary artist who lived and worked in The Pocket in Northern NSW Australia.

He was born in Forestville, Sydney, in 1968 and pursued a career in design. He quit his position as a commercial art director in 2001 to pursue his passion for fine art.

Craig Ruddy was renowned for his dramatic figurative portraits that are often interwoven into richly textured abstract landscapes. Ruddy’s art practice explores the space between our real and mythical connections to the land and environment.

His work reflects a deeply personal ongoing spiritual journey, where the artist explores questions of social conscience as well as current environmental issues. The recognition of Australian Indigenous People and Culture is also a core theme that has permeated the narrative of his past work and exhibitions.

Craig Ruddy’s inimitable painting style pushes the traditional boundaries of this classic medium. His work process involves a complex layering of mixed mediums that include paint, charcoal, pencil drawing, varnish and even glass.

Ruddy’s figures become inseparable from the landscapes in which they reside. His unique use of layering creates an illusion of transparency, whereby the foreground and background seem to both simultaneously co-exist and disappear, becoming one and the same. The illusory technique mirrors a deeper spiritual metaphor; the interconnectedness of all things.

The artist’s work was a continuing tribute to his surroundings, country and the people that reside within it. Ruddy’s practice was intuitive and organic. His use of free flowing sensitive lines combined with a vibrant, dynamic colour palatte result in bold paintings that are both sensual and powerful, aptly reflecting the inspiration he draws from the Australian landscape

In 2004 Ruddy won the Archibald Prize for his charcoal drawing of David Gulpilil entitled Two Worlds. The portrait of the Aboriginal actor won both the $35,000 Archibald portrait prize and the People's Choice Award.

He died aged 53 from COVID-19 complications, in the arms of his long term partner, actor Roberto Meza Mont, at their home in Byron Bay