Caroline Rudge
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Rudge works in the traditional Medieval medium of Egg Tempera with gold leaf, to create modern day icon paintings exploring themes of self and motherhood.
Working with intricate and multi-layered techniques and media, Rudge explores the self as characters through realistic portraiture, and found natural objects, such as taxidermy, eggs and nests.
These objects are used as metaphors for the self, evoking a fusion of icon painting and memento mori. By using storytelling , memory and referencing historical and Medieval religious themes, Rudge is concerned with ideas of motherhood, fertility, loss, attachment and healing.
This allows her to interconnect themes of strength and vulnerability, beauty and revulsion, love and burden, isolation and independence, whilst juxtaposing classic ideology with contemporary imagery .
To enhance Rudge’s practice, and bring added depth and layers of symbolism, she is exploring new ways of working with and combining long-established painting techniques with modern media and animation to create moving portraits, vignettes and short films.
Rudge’s client-led stop-motion animations use painstaking painting techniques and paper cut-outs to produce diverse and memorable short films, many of which have been nominated for awards and shown in film festivals worldwide.
As an illustrator, she uses printmaking techniques, particularly tetrapak drypoint, to produce detailed and multi-layered images with a surreal and dreamlike quality.
Rudge also runs an extensive workshop programme from her studio at Pound Arts in Corsham, and 2023/24 sees her work in collaboration with artist Rachel Heard to deliver a participatory arts and public art project , PACT.
Awards
Develop Your Creative Practice, Arts Council England, 2021
Public Art
PACT Corsham - Potley and Portland Rise Art Community ProjecT - Participatory workshops and public art project - with Rachel Heard - Sept 2022 - Mar 2024
Permanent sculpture and signage installed at Lacock Road Cemetery, Corsham 2022
Temporary installation, ‘Together’ in collab with Lost & Rambling Collective at Corsham Town Hall, 2020
Selected Animations & Commissions
‘The Mushroom Hunters’ By Neil Gaiman – Nov 2019 Commissioned by Amanda Palmer to illustrate an original poem
‘Mother’s Day (Singing Our Lives)’- 2018 A painted animation illustrating a song about
a mother parted from her refugee child. Commissioned by Three Faiths Forum, Freedom From Torture and the Mixed Up Chorus
‘Do You Know The Symptoms’ - 2018 Animation for Target Ovarian Cancer
‘The Words Don’t Come’ - 2017 A widely distributed End FGM film commissioned by the Royal College of Midwives and launched at the Houses of Parliament, 2017
‘Django’ - 2017 A series of projected animation for a live performance by the Hot Club of Wiltshire at Pound Arts in Corsham
All animations viewable on YouTube
3 large portraits for Standard Chartered Head Office, London & China
Many private commissions in collections in UK and America
Selected Solo and Group Exhibitions
‘Time, Tradition & Travesty’, 2010, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Mold
‘People I Know’, 2011, The Pound Arts Centre, Corsham
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, 2007, Invited Exhibitor 2008, 2022 Mall Galleries, London
Bath Society of Artists, various dates 2003 - 2022, Victoria Gallery, Bath
REVIVE, 2019, 3 person show at The Pound Arts Centre, Corsham
Fantastic and Strange, 2019, Fringe Arts Bath
Holburne Portrait Prize, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2012, Holburne Museum of Art, Bath
Royal West of England Academy, 2002 – 2016, Bristol
Wales Portrait Award 2, 2008 - 09, various venues throughout Wales
RBSA ‘Imaginative Portraits’, 2008, RBSA Gallery, Birmingham Awarded ‘Highly Commended’