Ce Duff

Meet Ce

I am a portrait and figurative artist from New Zealand, working mostly in acrylic and mixed media. Over the years I have intermittently dabbled with art in between working in administration, going to law school and raising a family. In the late1990s I was first taught portraiture in a group lead by a local portrait artist and learned to paint in oils. For a period during the early-mid 2000s I put down my brushes and focused on building my own creative business in designer wedding stationery. Then after a visit to an exhibition in 2015 my desire to create art was rekindled and I began to dabble again. I soon discovered an amazing online community of artists and art classes that changed my art making world and set me off on my current creative journey.

Mary Oliver’s quote is always a wake up call for me. We have one life, it is precious, oh that it could be a little wild. Letting go of what holds us back is everything. So… one wild and precious life. What am I going to do with it? What are you going to do with yours?

For me every artwork is a voyage of discovery – into the process and into myself. I constantly seek new ways to find and express the thoughts and story behind a face or the emotion felt in a pose. I love the experience of connecting to the past by bringing vintage subjects to life on the canvas, often amidst an intuitively abstract background. This is a fusion of the art forms I love the most – painting, portraiture and an intuitive process.

I live and work in Dunedin, New Zealand. It’s a long way away from most places, but it’s rewarding to know my art has found homes in many different places around the world and that the internet can connect us across the ocean.

May all our lives be a little wild and a lot precious.