Evan Woodruffe

Abstract Artist

ARTWORKS

Title: 10th August 2024

This is an unusually long format for me, and I enjoyed marching the procession of marks across the canvas; like the ancient Chinese way of map-making, the landscape read as one looks at it, rather than a vertical view.

Title: 14th January 2024

Three weeks staying in Alphabet City NYC at the end of 2023 had an immediate impact on my work. The relentless pace of the city, the visual cacophony of the streets, the exhilarating amount of art to absorb; it renewed my focus, simplifying and energizing my painting.

Title: 18th July 2024

Exhibited at Sydney Contemporary, this work anticipated the hot hues of the host city, with the cool green ribbon bisecting like a breeze, or river, or snake. I even heard from a viewer that the green line traced my life, twisted and almost broken in parts, yet enduring. Private Collection.

Title: 9th July 2024

Here is a riot of movement and colour, the long poles of spray colour pushing against the patterned fabric of lozenges in a dance of competing flavours, a cocktail that hits and lifts the senses. This painting has just asked the barman for another…

EXHIBITIONS

Smoked and Roasted Fe29 Gallery 2024

These are paintings of food, music, laughter, cocktails, and travel. They are social, they are movement, they entice and delight. Smoked & Roasted is a cocktail served at the bar across the street from where Evan was staying, and its balance of spice, sweet, citrus and salt has been brought back as a suite of luscious coloured paintings.

Sydney Contemporary 2024

PAULNACHE and I always try to do things differently, and returning to Sydney Contemporary, we wanted a complete focus on the new paintings. They were presented in a snaking line across the heritage wall of Carriageworks, without the artist’s name, no placards, QR code or anything to interfere with a direct experience of the work. With over 25,000 visitors over four days, we engaged with everyone, from First Nations artists to the Volunteers. It was a memorable success.

No Straight Lines, Te Whare Toi o Heretaunga Hastings City Art Gallery 2023

Opening just two months after the devastating floods of Cyclone Gabrielle, this exhibition offered a bright, uplifting environment for the community to refresh themselves in.
Until science finds a cure for our condition, remain medicated, PAULNACHE 2019

Until science finds a cure for our condition, remain medicated, PAULNACHE 2019

PAULNACHE and I had discussed how multipanel paintings could be rearranged and mixed up yet still work as an image.

A confused multiplicity of interconnected elements and surfaces that allude to our current urbanism.

Evan Woodruffe – artist and collector

“There are weapons in this world, but art is the antithesis of that. It’s something that builds up; it’s something that makes our hearts soar.”

COLLABORATIONS AND COMMISSIONS

Private Commission

This was made for a specific spot in the client’s new home, halfway up a tall, open stairwell.

Commission for MC, Office of the Crown Solicitors

"Along with his brilliant work that left us all speechless, Evan’s way of creatively collaborating and including us in his step-by-step process made the experience of working with him all that much more exciting."
Chatting with Claire Dutton of Auckland tailors Strangely Normal

Chatting with Claire Dutton of Auckland Tailors Strangely Normal

I'm wearing my Artist Jacket 2018, their Brubeck jacket made with genuine silk velvet printed with my work.
Working with the senior art students at Mt Albert Grammar School in Auckland Tamaki Makaurau 2021 as Artist In Residence

Artist in Residence at Mt Albert Grammar School

Working with the senior art students at Mt Albert Grammar School in Auckland Tamaki Makaurau 2021 as Artist In Residence to create this mural was an uplifting experience.

An assertively decorative aesthetic.

NEWS

Largest work to date 28th April 2023

My exhibition No Straight Lines at Te Where Toi o Heretaunga Hastings City Art Gallery provided the opportunity to negotiate with its Main Gallery, the largest un-poled space in the Southern Hemisphere.

Creative Matters Podcast

Whether you’re out for a stroll or need some aural distraction while working, you can now listen to me in conversation with Mandy Jakich at her lovely Muriwai studio for Creative Matters.

Exquisite Colours collaboration with Schmincke

My collaboration with renown German paint manufacturer Schmincke in 2022, designing the palette of colours for a Ultimate Mixing Set of Horadam Watercolours, was so successful that they asked me to devise a new set for 2023.

Newsletter February 2022

Delightfully, I’ve realised this newsletter reflects a part of my practice where elements come together to make a whole.