SCULPTURE PAINTING ILLUSTRATION

Lesley Ruda is an artist based in San Francisco, California.

Recent work addresses species extinctions and the destruction of habitats and habits. The viability and dignity of all living things, including humans, are threatened, not only for whole species, but also for specific individuals and populations close to us.

How we scale, assign value and choose specific technologies, including processes for making art, affect intimacy with the natural world and each other. We are a species increasingly threatened and threatening.

Painting, carving, choosing tools, joining, severing, adding, deleting, using discarded objects, and finding surreal links contribute to arguments, narratives and dissonance.

After defecting from the duck hunting cause, two aging duck decoys obtained new identities as a bison. One bison followed another to form a collective delegation for the 30 million bison slaughtered almost to extinction with the European colonization of America. I call this pacifist action to upgrade decoys: Unkilling. I invent fictive substitutes for loss.

I am drawn to the idea of the Japanese aesthetic, Wabi-Sabi––the acceptance of beauty as imperfect, idiosyncratic and incomplete––and to the specificity of discarded and culturally incongruous things.

Work as an occupational therapist and a cartoonist and my attachment to and dislocation from different countries influence the way I see, think and make art.

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Born and raised in Zimbabwe.

1976 BFA, Saint Martin's School of Art, London.

1976-1992 Editorial cartoonist for national UK magazines and publishers; decorative painter.

1991-2009 Unique painted furniture, hybrids of decorative and fine art. Sold at Wilkes Bashford and Shears & Windows, San Francisco, and designer showrooms around the US. Commissions from designers, architects and private clients internationally.

2012 MS in occupational therapy, San Jose State University .

2022 Retired occupational therapist, Laguna Honda Hospital, San Francisco. 

Ongoing fine art practice.

Exhibits

2018, Inking Women, 250 years of Women Cartoon and Comic Artists in Britain, Cartoon Museum, London.

1990’s: Group shows: Terrain, Virginia Breier, New Langton Arts, Visual AID, Show ‘n Tell, Overtime (San Francisco); Rene di Rosa Center for Contemporary Art, Napa, California; Sandro’s Gallery, Harare, Zimbabwe.

Private collectors USA, Europe, Africa, Australia.

Publications

2018, Inking Women, 250 years of Women Cartoon and Comic Artists in Britain, Nicola Streeten & Cath Tate, Myriad Editions.

1997, Living Room, Diane Dorrans Saeks, Chronicle Books.

1996, Damn Fine Art, Cherry Smyth, Cassell.

1991, Paintwise,  Jocasta Innes, Reed International.

1979, Sourceam,  feminist cartoon collective.

1977-1991, Cartoon/illustration for UK national magazines and publishers: Spare Rib, New Statesman, Feminist Review, Women’s Review, Cosmopolitan, Honey,  Harraps, British Film Institute, National Union of Public Employees, Trades Union Council;  Zimbabwe Department of Health; Zimbabwe National Conservation Trust.