Accessible Arts / arts + disability NSW

Interview with Keith Rutherford (visual artist)

Keith Rutherford, Little Bulli, 2006

Keith Rutherford is a visual artist living in Illawarra south of Sydney. He’s been drawing and painting for as long as he can remember and, having come out as a blind person (Stargardt disease) in 2007, now deliberately brings his visual perspective to much of his work. His work has been featured in many exhibitions, and he was a finalist in the 1999 Wynne Prize, the 2006 Dobell Prize, and was judge for the Thirroul Seaside and Arts Festival in 2003.

Who or what influenced you to become an artist?

I guess it goes back into my early childhood and particularly my early education. I went to a small primary school in Mosman [in north Sydney]. And I guess it’s what set me aside from the other kids because I was always the one that could draw – the artist. And I got lots of positive feedback from the teachers because they’d always pick out my painting to show as good work. And the other kids would always be saying, “draw this”. And so that’s how I got started. And not many kids seemed to have drawing skills in those days. I remember a kid came to Mosman High from Bankstown and he came up to me and said, “I hear you’re the other artist”. And I thought, “OK, I’ve been tagged as an artist”. And I went straight from high school to art school without giving it a second thought. There was never any other thing I wanted to do – it was always art!

Where do you practice and how much time do you spend on it?

I used to work full time and be a weekend artist. But then I had the luxury of dropping a few days at work and painting on a Friday, and any other day I can grab.

I’ve always had a studio wherever I was living, but now I have a shared studio in an art-supply store.
Because of my sight impairment I can’t paint at night. I have to paint in natural light because artificial light affects my sense of colour. So that restricts me, but I can still draw at night.

How do you develop ideas and receive feedback on your work?

Keith Rutherford, Stargardt's Red, 2007

I use my mental screen (how sighted people might picture things when they close their eyes) and then try to transfer that on to canvas. And because I’m blind my mental screen is highly developed. And these days I’m trying to paint absolute truth in that I’m trying to paint exactly what I see or don’t see. Sometimes the journey from my mental screen changes things a bit, but that’s an important part of the process too.

And I use technology too now. I have a CCTV (closed-circuit television – a device with a screen that can enlarge the print or images under its lens) and I love exploring other peoples’ art work with it and trying to get a sense of how they achieve what they achieve.

In school I would just draw things that I was passionate about, but I had a lot of help from my teachers.

There was a Mrs Kraussman who said, “Keith, you’ve got to look at modern art and abstraction”. And I didn’t want to at first, but she kept pushing me. I was like a lot of people – I thought anyone could do it. But it’s not true; you’ve got to have drawing skills and control before you can lose control.

And I just entered as many competitions as I could and I got good feedback as well.

How did you go about getting your work out there?

Again, entering competitions. And when I moved to the Illawarra I became part of the artist trail, so people would see my artwork as part of a tour.

What are the challenges in your art practice and how did you work to address them?

I think the challenge is trying to get that image from my mental screen on to paper or canvas. And I need to use my CCTV to look at paint in a tube to be sure, for example, of the type of blue it is. I was pretty monochromatic for a while, but I really wanted to get back into colour. And then I did a set of life drawings of women, and I really pushed myself to get the colours right. And I kept on challenging myself from there – especially something like trying to include both red and green. I don’t know what it’s like for the rest of the world to look at my paintings.

What advice would you have for an artist starting out with disability?

Another thing is learn the basics, and then take away the safety net to raise yourself to the next level. Whiteley used to use drugs to find another level, and I’m not suggesting others do that, but go wild and experiment. So have control but then lose control.

And the other thing is to tell your story, which I didn’t do; I was in denial for a long time. But tell your story and it doesn’t matter how unimportant you think it is, everyone’s an individual and everyone’s important. So you tell your story because your story is valid. And that’s the truth – if you can’t tell your story what can you do?