Rut Pedreño Criado

Raised in Valladolid, Spain, and now based in a small rural town nearby, Rut Pedreño Criado’s practice unfolds at a slower, more attentive pace. Working closely with their immediate surroundings, they draw from the rhythms of everyday life, nature and observation, building images that feel intimate yet quietly expansive. Alongside their work as a comic book author and illustrator, Rut continues to develop a personal painting practice rooted in curiosity, intuition and long-term exploration.

Their recent works centre on botanical forms and animals, motifs that appear not as isolated subjects but as part of a larger, interconnected whole. Rut describes their drawings as small ecosystems, places where plants and animals coexist, grow and respond to one another through colour and form. This way of working reflects both their rural environment and a desire to let images evolve organically rather than follow a fixed plan.

Painting by Intuition

Rut works primarily with gouache, acrylic markers and crayons, recently beginning to explore oil sticks as part of their process. Whether starting from a loose idea or working directly on paper, they deliberately avoid defining the outcome too early. “I try not to have a very defined idea from the beginning, so that I have more freedom in the process,” Rut explains, allowing intuition to guide each decision as the work develops.

Colour plays a central role in this approach. With a background in Fine Arts, Rut discovered early on that their thinking aligned more closely with painting than with line-based drawing. Since then, colour has become both a structural and expressive element in their work, used instinctively and with sensitivity. The result is a body of work that feels alive and exploratory, where colour, material and subject matter come together through an open, intuitive process.