Stories in Paper: Denise Rudy’s Portraits of Womanhood

The Interview

Can you start by introducing yourself and describing the work you’re making right now? 

I’m Denise Rudy, and I’m a San Diego artist. I work with paper, paint, and found objects to create portraits of women that reveal their voices.

My work really is about women, their resilience, their ability to adapt, their ability to multitask, and their ability to be intuitive. Women just have this sort of quiet, amazing elegance. That’s what I want to portray to the world… And I want women to remember that our beauty is not in the way we look. It’s how we are, how we feel, how we carry ourselves, and how we walk in this world.

That’s what my passion is.

Can you walk us a little bit through the process and how you choose found objects?

I collect things. I have magazines stacked to the ceiling in my studio because I have been a college professor for the last 24 years, and the library saves them for me. Then we load up my car, I come home, and I stack them. They start off in order, and they end up… not in order. I spend hours ripping all the pages and putting them in drawers of color.

Through this process, I’m already really excited to use this paper somewhere. 

Then, through social media or the Internet or going to different galleries, I’ll get an idea for a woman. I’ll sketch out a face. I’ll look for different photographs through magazines or royalty-free images just to kind of get the dimensions, and I’ll draw out the face, and then underpaint it to get some idea of what colors I’d like to use.

After that, I get my plan down, and the piece evolves from there.

It usually starts off with a photograph that I alter quite a bit from the beginning, and I just let the piece unfold. I start going through my papers, and I’ll start getting really excited. I’ll usually start with a background and put that in, and then I’ll paint the face, and the rest of it is all paper. I’ll start cutting strips for hair and start collaging flowers on the head… 

It’s a long process, and it’s very detailed. Sometimes it’ll take me three weeks to a month to finish a piece. I use gold leaf and whatever I have in the drawer, and I use stamps and all kinds of different additions to it. By the time it’s finished, I have a story about this woman.

Usually I’ll attach a title, and it becomes very personal to me. I imagine the woman’s life, sometimes from past generations, and sometimes current. It can be all kinds of different situations: a person from different countries, different age groups… and that’s how the pieces evolve.

So the women you’re depicting are not actual women, but they’re more ideas of women that form as you’re creating them?

Exactly. They’re never real people, and they’re never exactly from a photograph. The only ones that are a real person are the few that I’ve done of myself. I have three or four that are actually of me from behind, and those are my own stories.

When you exhibit, do you tell the stories of each work, or do you want it to be an experience that the viewer comes up with on their own?

By each piece, I have a short story that tells who they are. I am just about to finish a piece called ‘Woman Who Gets Messages from Butterflies.’ This woman just has flowers all over her head and butterflies all around her. When she started, I didn’t know who she was. But after she finished, I saw an artist who had butterflies. So then I put butterflies all around her. I imagine her kind of being flooded with these butterflies, and she’s receiving intuitive messages from them. They’re kind of magical.

I did a piece once that started off with a photograph of a woman from India, because I just loved all the colors. When I was finished, she ended up being Muslim, and she was standing in front of a burnt-out building. She ended up being someone who was in a war. It’s called ‘Home.’ That work has been in several exhibits. 

So, again, I don’t actually know who she’s going to become until she becomes.

So you actually do write a story about each one?

I do. I did a piece called Raven, and she’s got her hair all spread out around her. And it reminded me of when I used to live in Key West, Florida. A lot of my inspiration comes from my time there. I would ride my bike at night, and it would smell like night-blooming jasmine, and my hair was long. It was just this magical experience of humidity and wonderful smells.

So I did a series I call the Magical Women series, and Raven is about a woman who sneaks out at night, because I would go out late at night on my bicycle when the town would be quiet.

It sounds like there’s a bit of nostalgia in your work, too. 

Yes. Because I lived in Key West in 1978. It was really different then. We didn’t have phones, and we rode our bikes everywhere, and it was just a really unique, artsy place.

When you were talking about the process, you mentioned that you paint the woman/women first. Does any of the original painting show through in the final piece?

Oh, it does. Their faces show. It’s a painted portrait, and then it’s got all these cut pieces of hair, and the clothing is ripped pieces of paper, usually from magazines. Every once in a while, I’ll have to print something, like I had to print the butterflies just because I couldn’t find enough of them. Sometimes I create my own paper, my homemade paper with stamps and stencils. That’s all a part of the story. I don’t know what’s going to finish the story for me. 

The paper that you choose, you said it’s mostly based on color, but is the content of the paper also important to you? Are there stories maybe on the paper, or is there an advertisement about something that somehow relates to the piece you’re working on?

Sometimes, it does.

I have a piece called “Night at the Oscars”. It’s all collage. There’s no paint. It’s a woman from behind, and she’s got a giant red dress on. It’s a big piece, 24×30”. And the background of that is 80% words that I chose, like “Fendi” and designer names and beauty and glamour. So that was specific. 

I often hide things in the paper, like the eye of a cat or a little hidden piece that’s been chosen.

There’s a little piece in the picture of the woman that’s in the war of Barack Obama.

And so, it’s deliberate and sometimes not deliberate. 

But the fun thing for me… I just finished a woman, and her dress is made of Easter eggs. The top is Easter eggs, and the bodice of the dress is strips of wine and wine bottles in a refrigerator. That’s what excites me. “What is that stripe?” It’s a wine bottle. I love that it’s not what it’s supposed to be.

It’s a little bit of contradiction and discovery and playfulness all in one. 

Yeah, and I love that the viewer has to try or wants to try to figure out what that is. Like the lady in the war, her scarf is a car ad, but you would never know it.

What is it about paper and texture and layering that you’re drawn to?

It’s the scavenger hunt of finding, and it’s also the texture. I mean, you can paint hair, and it looks good, but it doesn’t look like when I spend two hours cutting out little strips of hair and gluing them all down. It’s got movement and light to it. And I love the finding of the paper, because when I find a piece, I just… it’s like, “I found it!”

It’s so exciting, and it gets really tough. I used to collage the entire face, which is really hard. There’d be times when my voice would say, “You know, you could just pick up a paintbrush and paint this, and it would be so easy.” But I love the challenge of paper.

I can feel it in your voice when you’re speaking. You’re just getting so excited, and it’s wonderful to see.

Oh, thank you. I love these women. I have a hard time letting go of them. I’ve started to do a few of them, especially the gold leaf ones, as high-quality giclées. I’m going to do maybe five of each, and that helps me because I’ve kept one for myself.

I go back in and hand-do all the gold leaf and re-stamp them, and they look like the originals. Then I varnish it again. All of the works are varnished with three coats of UV varnish. It works really, really well. 

You’re transitioning into full-time artistry after 23 years as a professor at Palomar College. What does that feel like for you?

I was just as into being a teacher and a program director as I am into art. I was very, very into that job for many years. It was my life. I probably would never have left until I just couldn’t do it anymore if I hadn’t gotten back into painting.

I was not interested in just regular painting. I stopped painting over 35 years ago because I was just sort of done with it. I’d done watercolor and oil and acrylic, and I was always detailed. So when I found this collage experience, I got really into it. I just wanted to do that more. I want to do that more than I want to teach.

It feels like, because I was an art education major in college, I was always a painter and an artist. I’m just sort of coming back to myself. It doesn’t feel as difficult as I thought it would. I’ve got students and all the people that I know at the college, but I’m really just excited to do my art.

When I’m in the middle of a piece, I cannot wait to get up in the morning. I have a home studio and I have a studio at Liberty Station, and I can’t wait to get to it.

That’s how I used to feel about preparing teaching and PowerPoints. So I’ve just transferred that passion into something else. It feels great!

Is there a difference between working in your home studio and your Liberty Station studio?

The Liberty Station studio is about being with others. I’m an extrovert, which is hard being an artist and being an extrovert because extroverts need people.

In my backyard, I have this amazing studio that I built. That’s the place that I make papers really messy. There’s lots of tearing. There’s lots of cutting. There’s stuff all over the floor. I do the heavy lifting at home.

Then when I go to Liberty Station, I’m going there deliberately to meet people that come through my studio and show them my work. So I paint there, or I’ll varnish there, or I’ll do a background. But I’m not digging through all the paper.

I don’t get a lot of work done there because people come through all the time. They walk into my studio, and I tell them that my work is made of paper. And then, because they can’t imagine that it’s paper because it looks like I painted the whole thing… then they’re intrigued and they want me to talk about it, which I love to do.

I think just going down there, I want to be social. There are seven of us, I believe, on my floor, and we all know each other, and that’s really fun too. It’s just great having both.

Would you say that it influences your work as well? 

No, my work is all in my head. I think about art all the time. Every time I look at a person’s face, I’m looking for shadows and values. Every time I go through a magazine, I’m looking for potential little jewels. I’m looking at other artists’ work, admiring it and noticing their colors.

It’s in my head all the time. 

I take classes, too. I take online and in-person classes. I always get something amazing from that, whether it’s a new skill, a new material, a new tool, or a new technique. I love taking classes. 

Can you talk a little bit about your upcoming exhibits and what excites you about them?

I have an exhibit right now in TAG Gallery in Los Angeles, and that’s exciting to me because my art is going to be seen by people outside San Diego.

My studio at Liberty Station works sort of like a gallery. My art is hung there, and so a lot of people see it that way.

I don’t do a lot of gallery exhibits. Because I like to talk to the people that buy my art. When my art is in the gallery, I’ll be there for the opening, but I’ve noticed that I don’t love that a piece is just gone and I didn’t get to meet the collector.

What I’m doing that’s new for me is outdoor art fairs, like Art Walks. I did the Coronado Art and Wine show, and I had a great time with that. On June 28th, I’ll be at the one-day Carlsbad Village Art Festival. I’m doing the Art Walk at Liberty Station the last weekend in July and the first weekend in August. Then I’m doing the one in Carlsbad; I believe it’s in September, at the Flower Fields. And I’ll probably do Art Adventure, which I did last year in Costa Mesa. That’s just a one- or two-day event, but it brings my art to Orange County. 

I’ve been in a lot of exhibits and different shows, but I’m kind of pulling back from that a little bit because I have so much fun doing these art shows where I get to meet people, and they like the stories about my paintings.

With your recent move into full-time artistry, do you see any changes in direction that you’d like to take or new things you’d like to explore? Where do you see the work heading next? 

Well, I wish I knew! I’m so based in intuition and magical stories that are in my head. This is art for me; my writing turned visual. I’m a storyteller in my mind, but I don’t like to type and I don’t like to write. So as I make up a story in my mind it comes out in the art. I never know where it’s going to take me, but I just know that every piece I create, I love as much, if not more, than the last one.

So, I’m just going to let it unfold. 

About Denise Rudy

Denise Rudy is a collage artist whose work seeks to convey the inner depth of the women she portrays. Through intricate compositions built entirely from torn magazine scraps, she invites the viewer to look closer—not only at the textures and colors, but at the stories woven within. She strives to capture a moment, a feeling, a quiet strength or vulnerability that transcends age, culture, or circumstance. When she construct pieces, she is reaching for that universal thread that binds us as women. She is saying, “I see you. I get you. You matter”.

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About the Author

Robyn Palescandolo is a visual artist, art historian, and Director of Marketing for San Diego Art Directory. Her own studio practice is rooted in classical realism, painterly observation, and the quiet beauty of the natural world. As an editor and interviewer for San Diego Artist Network, she is interested in thoughtful conversations that illuminate the creative lives of artists throughout the region.