A MALE MODEL friend of Australian artist Craig Ruddy found the pressure to look perfect so oppressive that he became acutely psychotic. He wound up trying to blind himself 'because he didn't like the world that he saw and he wanted to see it differently'. The friend is now well, but Ruddy still looks tearful when he talks about the episode that has made him wary of focusing on conventionally beautiful people.
Last month, Ruddy's earthy portrait of Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, Two Worlds, won him Australia's most prestigious art prize, the Archibald.
At 2.4m x 2.1m the portrait is massive, dwarfing the competition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). Finished with acrylic paint and watercolour pencils, the portrait chiefly consists of charcoal traced on reproduction wallpaper by 19th-century British designer William Morris. The mix of materials, Ruddy says, is meant to mirror Gulpilil's cross-cultural predicament.
Born in Arnhem Land in Australia's far north in 1953, Gulpilil grew up as a member of the Mandalpingu tribe in the area his ancestors inhabited for thousands of years. After landing a part in the cult 1971 film Walkabout, he went on to appear in box office hits such as The Last Wave, Crocodile Dundee and Rabbit-Proof Fence.
Ruddy's portrait, chosen from a record 732 entries, displays meticulous technique. In The Sydney Morning Herald, Robert McFarlane wrote: 'Ruddy's delicate sense of line shows Gulpilil appearing to metamorphose into a spinifex-stubbled desert landscape.'
Sprawling on the grass outside the AGNSW, Ruddy, 35, reflects on his own metamorphosis from virtual unknown to man of the moment. He says friends warned him he'd be 'pinned against the wall by the media, but nothing can compare you for this'.
On March 25, when it was announced that he'd won the A$35,000 (HK$208,000) prize, some 300 members of the media converged on the AGNSW. The story ran around the world. Now, Ruddy says, he notices that people stare at him all the time. Even as we speak, some businessmen at outdoor restaurant tables opposite us crane their necks.