About Sally Rhudy
I’m a British-born artist from a three-generation artistic family. My grandmother was a portrait painter and my mother an art teacher and painter, so art has always been part of my life. I trained at The Glasgow School of Art, where I explored painting, drawing, textiles, set design and environmental art.
My work is rooted in contemporary abstraction and is often built through layers - of paint, marks, materials and time. I’m interested in what sits beneath the surface: memories, fragments, symbols, ancient forms of communication and the traces people leave behind. Ancestry and ancient civilizations all feed into my work, alongside a long-standing fascination with how humans have recorded their presence across time, past and future - and how we are all connected.
The paintings often begin with research, images, written fragments or personal memories. Some of these references may disappear beneath later layers, while others remain as small marks or traces. I like the idea that a painting can hold things that aren't immediately visible - a history of its making, as well as the history and ideas that inspired it.
Today, I’m living in Maryland, USA, where I’m pursuing my passion for contemporary abstract painting.
More recently, I’ve begun exploring how the layers behind a painting can remain with the work in another form. Selected paintings carry a small digital layer containing some of the ideas, research and story behind their creation - a kind of time capsule that can travel with the artwork into the future.
Explore Beyond the Canvas →
I have exhibited work in galleries in the United States, England, Scotland and France, and have collaborated on projects with organizations including the BBC and the Edinburgh Festival.
I currently have gallery representation at Jo Fleming Contemporary Art, Annapolis, MD, and amazing support on my Instagram page @sallyrhudy_art
