Ruth Dodd

After high school I studied interior design at the National Art School East Sydney (4 years) and practiced as an interior designer with the NSW Government for a year or so before moving into the field of cartography. I then moved to Canberra to continue my career in cartography at the Division of National Mapping, now Geoscience Australia.

The principal focus of my long Commonwealth career was on the design of topographic, thematic, and aeronautical maps as well as managing the production of numerous atlases, including The Readers Digest Atlas of Australia, and for Cambridge University Press, the AUSMAP School Atlas and the Explore Antarctic text book.

In the 2002 Queen’s Birthday Honours List, I was awarded the Public Service Medal for my ‘contribution to major national mapping and atlas programs’.

On retirement, I took up painting full time. I work in oils, watercolours or pastels and my paintings are executed for my own pleasure and for the enjoyment of others. My genre is representational art and I work from close observation of a subject and use colour to dramatise what I see to be its essential elements.

Since 2008, I have attended a number of painting and drawing courses run by the ANU’s Centre for Continuing Education.

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