Part1 :: The Cloud Descended

Soft light flickers upon the still surface and Consciousness fractures.

The destruction of the feminine within this masculine world to date and the attempt to dismantle the feminine archetype.

Trauma, struggle, torment. History repeats.

Amid the depth of silence

Embedded remnants of humanity

The perils of battle take their toll

The silent war draws under tow

Part 2 :: Copper Lake

The alchemy of transition through the Copper Lake.

The resilience and healing qualities innate in humanity.

Survival, transition, strength, power,

The nurturing rise of the feminine.

The symphony of life resounding...

Distant times from before

Copper bites and all turns to gold

2021

It is almost trite to say that we live in unprecedented times. Yet in the darkening sky that arches and crests over us, and amid the

white noise, we find reverberant points of light, echoes of our collective past. If we search the universe of human experience, we can

find precedents; in this sense, nothing is unprecedented.

Craig Ruddy’s most recent body of work puts me in mind of the dystopias conjured by the Spanish painter Goya, in his series known

as the ‘BlackPaintings’. In the so-called Fight With Cudgels, also known as The Strangers, two over sized figures are locked in a private

war that consumes them.

Set against the back drop of a mountain ridge amid bulbous gathering clouds and azure sky, the combatants seem unconscious that,

from below their knees, they are mired in sand. Thus immobilised, their blind war is futile. They rage in the spite of the machine.

Ruddy’s own poetic response to this body of work narrates a pathway through the descending cloud to the nascent dawn.

‘The soft light flickered on the still surface

Consciousness fractured...’

Ruddy’s vision in the companion series - The Cloud descended, Cooper Lake and The Dawn - is much less nihilistic. The sublime

beauty of the female form arcs across the surface of the paintings, a vision in which body becomes horizon, and vice versa. The

human and the natural are bound in an endless loop. The artist suggests that The Cloud descended has to do with “the destruction of

the feminine”. Yet in these paintings the female form emerges as the dominant spirit, overwriting any attempt at suppression.

‘Amid the depths of silence

Embedded remnants of humanity

The perils of battle take their toll

The silent war draws undertow’

If we submerge ourselves in Ruddy’s Copper Lake, the healing properties of the chemical element might offer some momentary relief

from the dark cloud that wreathes our collective horizon. In Ruddy’s imagination, the earth itself has as oft pink, almost flesh tone. In

one particularly moving image from the series, a charcoal figure appears to be burying its head in despair. Her fingers though

are interlocked as if in prayer. If this figure could speak, she might be saying ‘there is hope and redemption’.

‘The symphony of life resounding...

Copper bites and all turns to gold’.

The Dawn is the terminal point in the journey, lit by infinite possibility. The dark skies and pregnant clouds have lifted, and a cobalt

blue reminiscent of Yves Klein wakes the eye. One Rubenesque figure dances rhythmically while another appears to kick the surface

of the water, spraying the canvas with flecks of blue. Another reclining figure rises to the horizon line, bleeding pink.

On the other side, there is uninterrupted joy as life returns.

Hope prevails.

Daniel Browning

Freelance arts writer and host of ABC Radio National's The Art Show