On a Purple Thought-Base - Evan Woodruffe

Evan Woodruffe was born in Tamaki Makaurau Auckland in 1965. While music was his first love, he started painting in the late 1990s and began exhibiting professionally in 2003. He completed an MFA (1st Class) at Elam University of Auckland in 2014, followed by a post-graduate degree in Art and Design (AUT).

“Most of our experience of the world is invisible - our thoughts, dreams, emotions; the way we move through life; and our relationships with others.” In his abstract paintings, which range from the tiny to the gargantuan, Woodruffe attempts to tease out this internal world, using colour to affect our emotions.

While painting remains the core of Woodruffe’s practice, his works have provided the imagery for printing onto fabrics, furniture, architecture, and automobiles (BMW, Sydney and Jaguar, Singapore). Through collaboration with designers and performers, he has extended his painting practice off the wall and into our 3D world.

Woodruffe has regularly shown at public institutions, which he says, “provides opportunities to create something for a whole community”. The most recent include: 'No Straight Lines', Hastings City Art Gallery (2023); Chengdu Biennale (2023); 8th Beijing Biennale (2019); 'The World is Porous', Tauranga Art Gallery (2018); and Sydney Contemporary (2017).

An established artist and long-standing supporter of the visual arts, Woodruffe is also a collector, teacher, and advocator. He has run Akepiro Street Studios, home to a dozen artists, since 2008, and is a regular contributor to community events.

For his exhibition 'On a Purple Thought-Base', Woodruffe has created a series of domestic-size works to accompany some of his larger, more complex pieces. These paintings are concentrated terrains of colour and line - deepest blue cushions ribbons of bright emerald, and modulated fields of grey and green push against lavender and peach. While these are almost musical relationships of colour and texture, they also reference intriguing landscapes.