Maysey Craddock
A River I Loved
This show is not, per se, about a River.
It is about the arc of a day, the rhythm of tides, the long lines of the past spooling beyond the edges.
It is Place, shaped and folded by memory and time, by the constellations of people that move through it, and by its quiet unfolding without us.
A River is the way I start a painting, how I follow a line, and the way I chase the questions it asks.
A River is a tree, an ocean, a storm.
A River is the ones I love. It is what we lost, and what we are losing. It is the next horizon, in all of its colors.
As I make this work, things are happening in the world at a pace and intensity that overwhelm. I come into the studio, and fall into color and line and surface: how the paint sinks into the tooth and folds of a brown paper bag, and how it saturates the silk thread that holds it together. A line unfurls and describes an arc across the paper - evoking tree, sky, space and light. Through Beauty, a way to breathe.
We think, ‘here is a river, it is ours’. We see ourselves reflected in it so it should always be this way. But it flies beneath our desires and demands, running to another sea. Let its path meander and create new channels, new land, new depths and possibilities.
Never the same river twice. Always an infinite pattern.
Maysey Craddock was born in 1971 in Memphis. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art, Portland and a BA in Sculpture and Anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans. Throughout her career she has participated in numerous solo public exhibitions across the United States and Germany, including the Museum of the University of Mississippi; Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; James F. Byrnes Institute, Stuttgart, Germany; 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 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; Charles Hotel, Munich; FedEx Headquarters, Memphis; First Bank, Nashville; NexAir Headquarters, Memphis; Pfizer Corporation, Memphis; 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. She divides her studio time between Memphis and Perdido Bay in Alabama.