Karl Rudziak

Rudziak is a figurative painter based in Portsmouth, UK with a focus on portraiture. His main areas of interest lie in social issues particularly social and palliative care, exploring attitudes to death and mental health through community engagement. Supplemented with portrait painting workshops, commissions and sales.

Rudziak's previous series of projects called “We Don’t Need Culture” examined perspectives towards the word culture, in particular the elitist connotations it can invoke, particularly in the context of arts and culture in Portsmouth. He worked with Portsmouth City Council communities teams and Arts Council England to engaged the local community in low income, inner city areas through sketching and painting portraits of local characters, working in community hubs, youth centres, coffee mornings and multicultural groups. 

His work resides in private and public hands, as part of Portsmouth city art collection and the Royal Navy, it has been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, National Gallery of Scotland, the Royal Academy, the Royal Institute of Oil Painters, the Royal Society of Marine Artists and is featured in the book 500 portraits: BP Portrait Award by Sandy Nairn.