About

Tim Rudnick was born in Hollywood, CA in 1942 and was raised in Pasadena, CA. He graduated from Pasadena High School in 1960. Rudnick earned his Bachelor's Degree in Art History at the University of California Riverside, where he studied contemporary art with Shirley Hopps (later Shirley Blum). He traveled through Europe 1965-1967, settling for a time in London where he lived and worked with Yoko Ono, who became one of his major influences, along with Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. He also admires the masters of Western classical art. In the 1960s Rudnick was represented by the groundbreaking Eugenia Butler Gallery and had numerous shows in California, London, and elsewhere. He stopped showing publicly in 1969 but has returned to the art world a half century later, an early figure in West Coast conceptual art re-emerging into both recent history and current discourse.

 

Rudnick’s other passion is the ocean, which he regards from both an ecological and an aesthetic position. In 1995 he founded the Venice Oceanarium, currently a teaching program and “museum without walls” preparing to occupy a physical structure on Venice Beach.

 

He and his wife, educator and author Robin Lithgow, have been married for over 50 years and live in Venice, CA in a Craftsman-style house that Rudnick designed and built. They have three children (Anya, Pesha, and Dov) and four grandchildren (Ada, Axel, Esme, and Lily).