Craig WADDELL
Born in Sydney in 1973
Craig Waddell graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the National Art School in 1999 and a MFA (Printmaking) at the Chiang Mai University, Thailand 2004. Waddell is a multi disciplined artist working in the areas of painting, drawing and sculpture
Waddell has won numerous awards and residencies including the Moya Dyring Award, an AGNSW residency at Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, the Marten Bequest Travelling Art Scholarship and the Gunnery Studio at Artspace in Sydney. He has exhibited widely throughout Australia and Asia and has been a finalist in many of the key competitions in Australia including the Dobell, NSW Plein Air Painting Prize, Muswellbrook Open Art Prize, the ABN AMRO Emerging Art Award, Kilgour Prize and the Doug Moran Portrait Prize.
Waddell won the 2010 Mosman Art Prize and in 2011 his iconic rooster painting won the Clients Choice Award in the RBS emerging art prize. In 2012 was a finalist in the Archibald and Wynne Prizes.
Craig’s paintings bear witness to his great passion for the physical characteristics of paint – the pushing, pulling and scraping of it around a canvas. Craig loves the notion of working with oil painting. “Material is what gets my juices flowing,” he says. His abstract and semi abstract paintings featuring figures, landscapes and flora, pulse with energy and light.
“I have a love affair with paint and painting and this passion runs through all the various subject matters and forms I tackle. I love the physical act of almost wrestling with paint and canvas, applying paint in an explosive way. Maybe this stems from my sporting background. I played first grade cricket from a young age, and this physical performance on the field, mirrors the physicality I bring to my painting.”
