Jude Rae

Jude Rae (b. Sydney, Australia) is a Sydney-based artist primarily known for her still life paintings, portraits and architectural interiors. The non-narrative imagery Rae employs allows the viewer’s attention to dwell on the formal and material aspects of representational painting, encouraging a reflective and considered approach to the complexities of visual experience. Pulling the viewer into a rich sensate terrain, Rae’s still lifes invite us into painted environments that appear doubly real, offering what is one of the primary pleasures of representational painting: the play of the material fact of paint itself with recognition as it occurs in the illusion of depiction. 

Over the last fourty years Jude has exhibited her work in Australia, New Zealand, Germany and the USA. She has been awarded residencies in France, Italy and New Zealand and has taught at a variety of art schools including Auckland University, the Australian National University and most recently at the National Art School (Sydney). In 2005 and 2008 Jude won the Portia Geach Memorial Award for Portraiture and in 2014 she was a finalist in the Archibald Prize, she was a finalist in the Archibald Prize in which she was also Highly Commended in 2019, 2021 and 2022. She was also a finalist in the Sulman and Wynne prizes, the latter most recently in 2024. In 2016 Jude Rae was the recipient of the prestigious Bulgari Award presented in partnership with the Art Gallery of NSW and in 2017 a survey of her work was held at the Australian National University Drill Hall Gallery. In 2021, The National Gallery of Australia included Rae in the landmark exhibition, Know My Name, the major survey of Australian women artists. Her work is held in major public and private collections in Australia, New Zealand, UK and USA.