Rudd originally enrolled at art school with the intention of studying textile design but was attracted to clay work through the three-month introduction to pottery he attended as part of his first year of training.[2] In the 1988 book Profiles: 24 New Zealand Potters, Rudd recalled:
My training in ceramics at Great Yarmouth and Wolverhampton colleges of art in England over a period of four years was inclined towards sculptural rather than domestic ware. My work from 1978 to mid 1986 was raku fired and each piece was an exercise in line and form. Since then it has become more figurative, with inspiration taken from the human body, but still with the emphasis on form and line.[3]
Much of Rudd's work has been produced within self-set limitations on materials and glazes, resulting in black, grey and white forms where interest is created by contrast between smooth, textured and shiny surfaces.[3] A Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grant in 1992 led to a period of experimentation with colour through glazes and firing techniques.[5] In 1998 craft historian Helen Schamroth described Rudd's work in colour as 'brief flirtations' amongst his characteristic use of restrained palettes.[1]
In recent years colour has made a greater appearance in Rudd's work. His 2015 survey show Rick Rudd: Beyond True to Form at the Sarjeant Gallery, for example, features series such as Ten Green Bottles (2012), forms glazed in shades of lime green and teal, and grouping of pastel teapots.[2][6]
Rudd has continuously explored certain forms throughout his career. Ceramic historian Janet Mansfield writes 'Most of his forms are vessel derived but their purpose is an exploration of sculptural form'.[7] A major 1996 survey of Rudd's work at the Sarjeant Gallery divided his work into five formal groupings: box, bottle, bowl, vessel and figurative. Writing in the exhibition catalogue, Paul Raynor describes how the functional terms are pushed to their extremes by Rudd: a ‘bottle’ is an ‘enclosed vessel, without a handle and with a small aperture at its highest point’ and a bowl is ‘an open vessel with its widest point at, or near, its lip’ but actual works may not look or function anything like a traditional bottle or bowl.[8]
In addition to abstract forms, often geometrically inspired (such as his 'Mobius twists' of the 1980s), Rudd has also had a figurative side to his practice. While at art school he visited Dudley Zoo to sketch the primates, and his work has featured chimpanzees, gorillas, mandrills and orangutans.[8]: 7
In the 1980s Rudd made works where male and female torsos appear to be emerging from columns, which 'allude to the sculptural tradition of carving from a block'.[8]: 7 His 2015 survey exhibition Rick Rudd: Beyond True to Form included numerous figurative pieces such as the group Second Childhood made up of objects that call back to childhood: a teapot shaped like a wheeled elephant toy, a monkey puppet, a comic policeman with a truncheon and a ventriloquist's doll.[2] Pieces such as these, or Lucky! Teapot (2011), showing a leaping cat squashed by a falling brick, draw on the English tradition of novelty collectable teapots.[2]: 10
Ceramics museum
In 2014 Rudd purchased a 1970s apartment building in central Whanganui with the intent of transforming the building into a ceramics museum displaying his own work and the work of other New Zealand ceramic artists he has collected over the years.[2]: 11
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