Best known for her visceral gouache paintings of ephemeral landscapes, Maysey Craddock examines the dualities and mysteries of nature and those relationships to space and time. Through saturated earth tones and translucent elemental layers, she depicts the spaces in between, the interactions of nature and architecture, and what happens beyond the grasp of human control. Her imagery is dense and fluid, with trees, watery surfaces and roots figuring prominently as metaphors of the eternal cycles of death and rebirth, and the inevitability of entropy.
Based on her own photographs of wetlands and other fragile wild spaces, her process layers intricate drawings and performative painting onto found objects (typically brown paper bags that have been carefully embroidered together) - a conceptual regeneration which mirrors the geological processes she depicts and references the way we seek to both shape and preserve what we see in nature. She compares her process to a familiar expression: “There is a chunk of time where I am only seeing the trees, and then towards the end I begin to stand back more, and try to see the forest. It becomes a balance between light and dark, the contrast of tight color and washy strokes, all weaving together until I feel, instinctually, that the painting has achieved the perfect harmony and tension. The built paper and the unbuilt image merge.” Like the cycles of the sun, her work transports the viewer into a meditative place that is nostalgic and rhythmic, yet fragile, hopeful, and wild - an opportunity to begin, again.
Maysey Craddock was born in 1971 in Memphis, TN and currently lives and works in Memphis. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art, Portland, ME and a BA in Sculpture and Anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans. Throughout her career spanning over 25 years, she has participated in numerous solo exhibitions across the United States and Germany, including the Museum of the University of Mississippi; Sears Peyton Gallery, New York; Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas; David Lusk Gallery, Memphis; Washington and Lee University, Virginia; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York; Taylor Bercier Fine Art, New Orleans; James F. Byrnes Institute, Stuttgart, Germany; Pan American Art Projects, Dallas, TX; Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle; The Foyer, Munich, Germany; Maine College of Art; and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. Her work has been included in a plethora of group exhibitions and is in the collections of many institutions and organizations, including the Brooks Museum of Art; The Arkansas Arts Center; Music City Center, Nashville; Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN; Charles Hotel, Munich; FedEx; First Bank, Nashville; NexAir; Pfizer Corporation; St. Mary’s Episcopal School and The Assisi Foundation in Memphis. She has received numerous awards, grants and residencies, including the Tennessee Artist Fellowship from Austin Peay State University; an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Tennessee Arts Commission; Artist in Residence at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, Germany; Artist in Residence at Maine College of Art; and sculpture and painting residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.
Upcoming shows:
A River I Loved, David Lusk Gallery, Memphis, TN, 19 Nov - 21 December 2024
Represented by:
David Lusk Gallery, Memphis and Nashville
Sears Peyton Gallery, New York and Los Angeles
Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas