Craig Ruddy - Australian Contemporary Art

 

 Craig Ruddy (1968 –2022) was an Australian artist, known for winning the Archibald Prize in 2004 with his portrait of Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil. Ruddy died of complications related to COVID-19 on 4 January 2022, at the age of 53
"Craig Ruddy is an award winning contemporary artist who lives and works in The Pocket in Northern NSW Australia.
Craig Ruddy is 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 is a continuing tribute to his surroundings, country and the people that reside within it. Ruddy’s practice is 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."(craigruddy.com)

 

Arthur McIntyre - Collage

Arthur McIntyre (1945 – 2003) was an Australian artist and art critic. He was born in Katoomba, New South Wales.As an artist he primarily worked in the media of collage, drawing and painting. Many of his works were controversial for their sexual content, often utilizing collage elements sourced from pornographic magazines. In 1987 the artist Jan Senbergs awarded McIntyre the acquisitive Gold Coast City Art Gallery Prize for one such painting/collage called "Flesh and Blood" (1987). A less controversial, autobiographical drawing about growing up in the Blue Mountains was awarded the acquisitive Kedumba Art Award by artist James Gleeson in 1992. McIntyre's work is held in many other public collections including most Australian State gallery collections, such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the National Gallery of Australia, who has more than 100 of his works. In 1994 Ted Gott curated McIntyre into the groundbreaking group exhibition "Don't Leave Me This Way: Art in the Age of AIDS" at the National Gallery of Australia. Wikipedia

James Timothy Gleeson

James Timothy Gleeson (21 November 1915 – 20 October 2008) was an Australian artist.He served on the board of the National Gallery of Australia.Gleeson was born in the Sydney district of Hornsby in 1915 and attended East Sydney Technical College from 1934 to 1936.In 1938 Gleeson studied at Sydney Teachers College, where he gained two years training in general primary school teaching.Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst, André Masson, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung became major influence in Gleeson's workGleeson's themes generally delved into the subconscious using literary, mythological or religious subject matter. He was particularly interested in Jung's archetypes of the collective unconscious.

 In 1944 Gleeson created The sower referencing Jean-François Millet’s 1850 painting of the same title. Rather than showing a landscape with a conglomerate main figure, Gleeson presents an eerie twentieth-century view of a desolated one. He commented on the work's genesis as a response to the trauma of longtime warfare:
    I think that there was always the hope that it could influence the way people thought about war. That it could alert people to its horrors and prevent it occurring again. You see, I was born during the First World War in 1915, and my earliest experiences were with people who were in that war or remembered the war very vividly, and then, just when I was beginning to paint, the Second World War began. So war became a kind of lurking terror in my mind from infancy through to late adolescence, when it was all building up again for another one.
During the 1950s and '60s he moved to a more symbolic perspective, notions of human perfectibility. At this time he increasingly fashioned small psychedelic compositions made using the surrealist technique of decalcomania in the background, to suggest a landscape, and finished by adding a fastidiously painted male nude in the foreground. Many of his paintings had homoerotic undertones, something which reflected on Gleeson's own homosexuality.The ideas for these compositions also saw Gleeson move into collage with his Locus Solus series, where he produced a substantial body of work by placing dismembered photographs, magazine illustrations, diagrams and lines of visionary poetry against abstract pools of ink.

 Since the 1970s Gleeson generally made large scale paintings in keeping with the surrealist inscape genre. The works outwardly resemble rocky seascapes, although in detail the coastline's geological features are found to be made of giant molluscs and threatening crustaceans. In keeping with the Freudian principles of surrealism these grotesque, nightmarish compositions symbolise the inner workings of the human mind. Called 'Psychoscapes' by the artist, they show liquid, solid and air coming together and directly allude to the interface between the conscious, subconscious and unconscious mind. Gleeson's later works incorporate the human form less and less in its entirety. The human form was then represented in his landscapes by suggestions, an arm, a hand or merely an eye.
His retrospective in 2004-2005, Beyond the Screen of Sight, included 120 paintings and was exhibited in Melbourne and Canberra. The Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibited Gleeson's drawings for paintings in 2003 and The Ubu diptych in 2005 to celebrate Gleeson's 90th birthday.The Ubu diptych is regarded as one of his greatest.In September 2007, the largest collection of Australian surrealism ever collected was donated to the National Gallery of Australia by Ray Wilson. The collection included various works by James Gleeson.Wikipedia

Basil Hadley

Basil Hadley (1940 in London, England – 2006 in Stepney, Adelaide) was an English Australian printmaker and painter. His works are represented in National and State public galleries around Australia and in various private collections

Basil Hadley studied at the Ealing College of Art in London. He came to Australia in 1965and studied printmaking at the Prahran College of Advanced Education, Melbourne.
From 1975 until his death, he resided in Stepney, Adelaide, South Australia with his wife Tanya who also died a few months prior to Hadley.
The estate of the late Basil Hadley, including paintings, graphics and book collection were auctioned by Elder Fine Art,North Adelaide in 2007.Wikipedia