About

Craig Ruddy is an acclaimed Australian contemporary artist and an important figure in Australian art history, best known for his portrayal of Australian First Nations people including David Gulpilil, Warwick Thornton, Cathy Freeman, and Bruce Pascoe. Craig’s ability to create works of great passion, that work on multiple aesthetic levels, has made him a five-time finalist for the renowned Archibald Prize. 

Craig had a restless quest to understand the vastness of the landscape and our place within it. His inimitable painting style pushed traditional boundaries through a process that involved a complex layering of mixed mediums, including paint, charcoal, pencil, varnish, and even glass. This unique use of layering worked to create an illusion of transparency in his paintings, whereby the foreground and background seem to both simultaneously co-exist and disappear throughout many of his works, as if becoming one and the same—a technique which mirrors a deeper spiritual metaphor - the interconnectedness of all things.

Ruddy (or Craig), who was born in Sydney in 1968, worked as a commercial art director before quitting his job in 2001 to pursue his passion for art full-time. In 2004, he came to the attention of the wider art community when he was awarded Australia’s most prestigious painting prize for his controversial OR highly publicised portrait of First Nations actor David Gulpilil, where the work became one of the most talked about in the history of the Archibald Prize.

In 2008?, after a series of sold-out solo shows in Sydney, Craig decided to travel between Europe and South America to continue and develop his art practice. He established a second home and studio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before moving to his beloved hilltop home in The Pocket in northern NSW in 2012.  Here Craig and Roberto, his lifetime partner, created an artist’s haven with their many friends, tropical garden and open studio. Ruddy’s commitment to his work continued to reflect his deeply personal spiritual journey, exploring questions of social conscience and the environment.

Ruddy’s art practice sought to explore the space between our real and mythical connections to the land and environment; his dramatic, figurative portraits that would often be woven into richly textured landscapes, a juxtaposition that resulted in bold, sensual, and powerful paintings. His practice was intuitive and organic with his use of free-flowing, sensitive lines, often combined with vibrant, dynamic colour palettes. Craig’s gift to us is his incredible body of work; we will never forget the extraordinary painter and person that is/was Craig Ruddy.