Ephemerality, the passage of time, unfolding cycles of regeneration and reclamation, growth and decay. The eternal cycles of death and rebirth, and the inevitability of entropy and change. These themes have grounded and guided my work for years and continue to lead me to new understandings of landscape, its inherent resilience and, now, its vulnerability in this age of human consumption. – Maysey Craddock
Cris Worley Fine Arts is proud to announce our upcoming solo exhibition with Memphis-based artist, Maysey Craddock. Together Worley and Craddock have mounted ten solo exhibitions in twenty-two years of representation. The exhibition, entitled Vanishing Lands, opens with an artist’s reception on Saturday, August 27th from 5 to 8 pm. Craddock will be in attendance.
Vanishing Lands, consists of six new gouache paintings on Craddock’s signature material — found paper bags, the materiality of which runs parallel to a longstanding leitmotif within her work. Craddock is passionately driven to explore the theme of reclamation, to reclaim the land she devoutly paints year upon year, to reclaim the mundane paper bag, with its intended purpose to contain, now taking on a broader meaning of the word. Images of trees and brambles, water’s edges and reflecting pools have become more abstracted in recent years, echoing the how one’s memory of a place shifts and morphs with passing time. The result is often beautiful, sometimes haunting, and always nostalgic. For the past two decades Craddock has continued to imbue each with heart and soul. Vanishing Lands is the latest breathtaking chapter in this author’s southern gothic novel.
Maysey Craddock currently lives and works in Memphis, TN. She received her MFA in 2003 from Maine College of Art. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of the University of Mississippi, Oxford; Stanier Gallery, Washington & Lee University, Lexington, VA; the Baum Art Gallery, University of Central Arkansas, Conway; and the Brooks Museum of Art, Memphis, TN. Likewise, she has been included in exhibitions at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton; Walton Art Center, Fayetteville, AK; McNay Museum of Art, San Antonio, TX; Dixon Museum of Art, Memphis, TN, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle, WA; Contemporary Art Center of New Orleans, and Hunter Museum, Chattanooga. Craddock has received numerous fellowships including the APSU Tennessee Artist Fellowship, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship, and has participated in artist residencies both in the US and Germany, including the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus Residency and the Vermont Studio Center Residency. Her work is also part of many public and private collections such as the Brooks Museum of Art, The Arkansas Arts Center, UT Southwestern Medical School, Federal Express, Nordstrom, and Pfizer Corporation, among others.