Craig Rubadoux (Born 1937) American,  Oil On Canvas Titled Tracks.

Includes original invoice for $13,200 From Dabbert Gallery.

Overall Size: 44 1/2 x 54 1/2 in. 

Sight Size: 43 x 53 in. 

Craig Rubadoux (born 1937, Rochester, New York) is a celebrated American painter and draftsman whose expressive, autobiographical work blends surrealism, biomorphic abstraction, and figuration. Raised in Sarasota, Florida from 1945, Rubadoux began his artistic journey at the age of eight through children’s summer art classes at the Ringling Museum of Art, where he was mentored by renowned abstract artist Syd Solomon. His natural talent was quickly recognized, and by the age of eleven he had his first one-man show with the Sarasota Art Association. In 1954, he received a scholarship to the Ringling School of Art, and the following year, while still in high school, he apprenticed under nationally recognized illustrator Ben Stahl. In 1956, Rubadoux traveled with the Stahl family to Spain, where he remained for two years studying and exhibiting in galleries in Madrid and Málaga.

Upon returning to the United States in 1958, Rubadoux continued to exhibit widely, holding solo shows with the Sarasota Art Association and the Creative Arts Gallery in St. Petersburg. He simultaneously worked in arts education, taking roles at the Ringling Museum’s art education department, the Hilton Leach Amagansett School in Sarasota, and the Famous Artists School in Westport, Connecticut. Over the course of his long career, Rubadoux taught at several major Florida institutions including the University of South Florida, the University of Florida, and Florida Atlantic University.

His artwork has been exhibited across the U.S. and internationally, in venues as varied as Woodstock, Sarasota, and Spain, and in institutions such as the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, and the Ringling Museum of Art. Notable exhibitions include the Florida Pavilion at the 1964 New York World’s Fair, the Ringling Museum’s 1986 solo exhibition Craig Rubadoux: Works on Paper 1962–1984, and a 2015 solo exhibition at Allyn Gallup Contemporary Art Gallery in Sarasota.

Rubadoux’s paintings are deeply personal and intuitive—what he himself described as a visual journal of his thoughts, emotions, and surroundings. His work resists strict categorization, balancing between abstraction and realism. Mark Ormond, curator of his 2015 Sarasota exhibition, noted that Rubadoux's approach "is neither pure realism nor pure abstraction" but instead fuses elements of surrealism, automatic drawing, and biomorphic form. His early influences—Solomon, Stahl, and Margaret Clement—helped shape a voice that has remained distinctly his own. Critics and curators have referred to Rubadoux as a “Sarasota master,” recognizing his enduring impact on Florida’s artistic landscape and his unique ability to translate memory, emotion, and nature into lyrical, gestural compositions.