HERBERT CREECY
A LEGEND REDISCOVERED
BILL LOWE GALLERY
HERBERT CREECY
(1939 - 2003)
“Herbert Creecy was part Abstract Expressionist wild man, part truth - seeker, and part pseudo- hayseed who was blessed with the sensitivity of a philosopher king.”
Dan R. Talley, Professor, Fine Arts Kutztown University, PA
HERBERT CREECY INTRODUCTION
(1939 - 2003)
Decidedly earthy and always inventive, Herbert Creecy was part Abstract Expressionist wild man, part truth-seeker, and part pseudo-hayseed who was blessed with the sensibility of a philosopher king. He was a painter who obsessively made art for more than forty years - a passion that took hold of him in high school, propelled him through studies at the Atlanta College of Art, and landed him a fellowship from the government of France to work with printmaker Stanley William Hayter at Atelier 17, in Paris, at age twenty-five. He apprenticed for a year and joined the ranks of an august group of other Hayter - trained artists including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall, and Pablo Picasso. Creecy eventually found his artistic center in old six-thousand-square-foot former cotton warehouse in Barnesville, sixty miles southwest of Atlanta, Georgia where he worked and often lived for a quarter-century.
Now heralded as the most significant Abstract Expressionist painter ever to come from the South, Herbert Creecy’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.), the High Museum of Art (Atlanta), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, as well as in a vast array of blue-chip corporate and private collections.
Herbert Creecy’s dense and exuberant paintings employ a range of experimental techniques that were ahead of his time. Though widely known for his “squiggles”, the scope of Creecy’s oeuvre demonstrates his immense ingenuity and technical virtuosity. Wildly prolific, his imagery and influences were unbounded by traditional constructs. He often re-purposed and painted over canvases to unearth new compositions, pushing the spatial boundaries of the traditional picture plane. Creecy’s methodology allows his work to maintain its integrity and complexity in almost all orientations. What always remains is a pure painterly expression of an internal landscape.
Widely acknowledged as Atlanta’s most renowned painter, Herb Creecy’s “Southern-ness” gave him as much pride as lament; he was quoted to have often been disappointed with the limitations of the Atlanta arts scene. Yet, he never migrated nor disassociated from the regionality that was so integral to his identity. Abstract Expressionists like Jasper Johns, Cy Twombly, and Robert Rauschenberg are rarely attributed to the South; their artistic careers were launched out of and driven by New York, their narratives often stripped of their geographical origins. Herbert Creecy maintained impressive artistic influence from his Atlanta base, where his creative mastery earned him a rightful place in the arc of art history.
INCANTATION, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 66 INCHES
GEISHA, 1992, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 67 X 117 INCHES
SIMULACRUM, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 36 X 36 INCHES
ZANZIBAR, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 86 X 108 INCHES
Herbert Creecy believed that great art is based on strong emotion ....and he must be in touch with his intuition . . . and he must disengage totally from the intellect.
- From the video, Creecy: presented by MOCA GA, produced by Alan Stecker, and made possible by a grant from The Judith Rothschild Foundation
THE CHANNEL AND THE TANKER, 1978 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 84 X 108 INCHES
PINWHEEL, 1991 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 86 X 108 INCHES
SPIROGYRA, 1991, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 83 X 131 INCHES
PANGEA, 1990, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 85 X 120 INCHES
COSMOGENESIS, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 66 X 133 INCHES
EUPHORIA, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 80 INCHES
Herbert Creecy uses air compressor to push the paint around. His sense of excitement is palpable in all the experiments that fill his gallery. The compressor’s forced air produces a consistent doughnut shape that loosens at the outer rim and Creecy, plays with the repetition of that shape. A good number of the paintings are dense, all over patterns that create an ambiguity of figure and ground, solid and void. In others, the composition is much looser and the familiar shapes freer floating.
The shapes seem to serve as a vehicle of color. Herbert Creecy devised a palette for each painting. One is an austere black and white with a hint of rusty water; another, a raucous chorus of pink, grape, and magenta. These efforts work on varying degrees.
- Catherine Fox, 2002
WINTER FOCUS, 1983 - 1989 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 91 X 65 INCHES
SHOGUN, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 46 INCHES
JAPAN, 1990, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 66 X 115 INCHES
CAUGHT IN THE SPIRAL, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 86 X 86 INCHES
“My perspective on the paintings of Creecy is that the sensibility of being “now” is what constitutes the present, which comes alive for anyone who takes the time to see his work as a contemporary experience that never goes away.”
“As I have chosen to speak about the artist’s sensibilities as a painter as being in the present, the issue is not about the literal present but about “now” as opposed to the past being “then.”
Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
MATSUDA, 1990 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 84 X 84 INCHES
STORMS OF WAR, 1974 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 84 X 108 INCHES
DISTANT LIGHT, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 42 X 33 INCHES
COMES THE NIGHT, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 42 X 33 INCHES
“Herbert was constantly renewing himself as an artist. He never rested on his earlier inventions but moved on to new ways of applying paint that were original and different from anything else.”
- Gudmund Vigtel, Director High Museum of Art (1963 - 1991)
SHANTY UNDER PRESSURE, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 58 INCHES
SHANTY, 1988 - 1990 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 68 X 68 INCHES
Wildly prolific, his imagery and influences were unbounded by traditional constructs. He often re-purposed and painted over canvases to unearth new compositions, pushing the spatial boundaries of the traditional picture plane. Creecy’s methodology allows his work to maintain its integrity and complexity in almost all orientations. What always remains is a pure painterly expression of an internal landscape.
KHAN, 2001 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 84 X 85 INCHES
SHIFTING PARADIGMS, 1993, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 67 X 71 INCHES
ARMANI, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 66 X 60 INCHES
GLISTEN, 1990, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 72 X 108 INCHES
IPANEMA, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 96 X 86 INCHES
Given the method by which he worked, it could be said that Creecy liberated himself through the act of painting, what might be understood as a cognizance of temporality, an acute awareness of time. This might further suggest that his art carried with it a direct philosophical sense of being. It is possible that he understood his role as a painter as someone living through a moment in history wherein his art could be likened to a kind of existential realization that gave attention to himself and his mortality as being integral to the act of painting.
It would be difficult to say whether such a moment really existed in his work. Such philosophical motives do not always reveal themselves so clearly. Even so, this does not negate the artistic desire for emancipation. Creecy was clearly interested in making paintings on his own terms. Despite any influences that may have contributed to his work – if allowed to exist consciously within his paintings – the emergent forms would ultimately remain his own and uniquely attributed to his paintings.
- Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
WHISTLING WIND, 1999, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 68 X 68 INCHES
GREY RHYTHM (1), 1999, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 68 X 68 INCHES
GREY RHYTHM (2), 1999, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 68 X 68 INCHES
In a more parochial sense, Creecy was out on his own. His major concern became the direction these forms would take. Would they remain static, or would they move forward? Would one painting offer a direction for another or for an entire assembly of paintings? If so, this would not always appear obvious in Creecy’s work. Rather, there would most likely be a series of interruptions or intervening variables to the extent that motifs from the past would impinge upon the future, but not always in a direct sequence or in any perceivably logical order.
- Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
CAPRI, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 67 X 71 INCHES
ARRIVAL, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 60 INCHES
CRESCENDO, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 22 X 37 INCHES
SEAFOAM DREAM, 1992, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 65 X 113 INCHES
SANCTUARY, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 60 X 54 INCHES
Creecy was clearly interested in making paintings on his own terms. Despite any influences that may have contributed to his work – if allowed to exist consciously within his paintings – the emergent forms would ultimately remain his own and uniquely attributed to his paintings.
THE BIRTH OF LIGHT, 2002, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 36 X 26 INCHES
STORMY MORNING, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 42 X 42 INCHES
Herbert Creecy often re-purposed and painted over canvases to unearth new compositions, pushing the spatial boundaries of the traditional picture plane. Creecy’s methodology allows his work to maintain its integrity and complexity in almost all orientations. What always remains is a pure painterly expression of an internal landscape.
TITILLATION, 2002, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 42 X 32 INCHES
WOMB, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 30 X 22 INCHES
WHILE IN THE THROES OF THINGS, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS , 66 X 91 INCHES
CLIMAX, 1993 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 53 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE (1975 - 2001)
Brazilian Romance retains a higher contrast between the color tonalities, offering a greater sense of depth and definition of the natural forms. From the perspective of painting – call it abstract expressionism if you will – the emphasis is clearly on the transition between the source of the artist’s vision and its purposeful devolu-tion into abstraction. These paintings express two different directions relative to form, namely, translucency and surface contrast. Having just described this visual phenomenon in literal terms, one might further clarify the artist’s extraordinary gift for painterly transformation as being an essential aspect of his subject matter. It is through this transformation that the artist’s Ego reveals a particular energy. The surface becomes something other than a material quantity. Rather Creecy has shown us a lyricism of vision through his desire to become part of what he is painting, in essence, to give us an experience that exceeds the normative, there-by moving our sensibilities inscrutably into the realm of art.
Like secular missals, taken mysteriously outside of language, the paintings of Creecy hold the rapture of the unknown. His imagery focuses on the molecular as if suspended in transparent tidal pools hovering one above another as in his majestic Brazilian Romance Dream Currents (1991). The paintings from this series constitute a beckoning toward polychromatic adulation, fraught with sanctified agates or the gleaming scales of abalones bundling in silicon nets of tranquility. With Creecy it is difficult to discern, foretell, or negotiate one painting against another. There is little in the way of a criterion adequate to make that kind of comparison.
- Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : PARADISE, 2001, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 67 X 108 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : DREAM CURRENTS, 1991, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 69 X 113 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : RHAPSODY, 1991, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 69 X 113 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : VALLEY AND CLOUDS, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 84 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : PANOPLY, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 78 INCHES
“I am a shapemaker. Underneath all this is a complex structure.” Herbert Creecy
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : COBALT MOVEMENT, 2001 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 84 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : LAGOON, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 91 INCHES
BRAZILIAN ROMANCE : CONDUCT, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 67 X 80 INCHES
Each surface holds its own essential dimensionality, not merely in terms of width, height, and breadth, but a lingering depth of metaphysical purpose and distillation.
Each painting holds its own bearing, its own separate conduit of inspiration, tenacity, and refinement. There is a purpose inducted within these paintings that reigns beyond the obvious.
What we see is a kind of instantaneous surveillance honed through with honesty accompanied by a quiet reproach to any harrowing abscess that defies a perspicuous sense of gravity reeling outside the designation of truth.
Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
THE MAHARAJA’S GARDEN, 1993 - 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 91 X 79 INCHES
Creecy’s work focuses on the dichotomous relationship between creation and destruction. Although usually masked by the seductiveness of his colors and his generally reassuring compositions, much of his work pays homage to the destructive elements of nature (this underlying violence is often reinforced in his titles through references to heat, fire, force, pressure, darkness, fractures, etc.). This tension created by these opposing moods is enhanced through comparison and reconciliation of contrasting and seemingly contradictory elements – heavy impasto paint producing airy lyrical passages, bold lines and stripes building nothing more than the implication of stability.
- Dan R. Talley (New York, 1988)
TUT’S GARDEN, 1991 - 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 64 X 68 INCHES
FLOATING WINDS, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 78 X 67 INCHES
SIGNS ARE RISING IN THE EAST, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 78 X 78 INCHES
GRACE, 1992 - 1993 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 90 X 67 INCHES
NIGHT LAGOON, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 80 X 66 INCHES
Creecy made the paintings that he hoped will “set up their own atmosphere,” doing away with stable focal points so that the eye doesn’t ever find a spot from which the entire painting will “fall into place”. It is this dispersive compositional structure that causes the paintings to reconfigure within an ever – changing structure. This dynamic presents the possibility for an ongoing dialogue object/ artist and viewer – a dialogue that approaches the essence of human expression and understanding.
- Dan R. Talley (New York, 1988)
LUNAR WINDS, 1991 - 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 90 X 66 INCHES
HERALD, 1996, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 66 X 67 INCHES
COASTAL DAWN, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 69 X 66 INCHES
THE DRAGON’S TENTACLES, 1999, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 67 X 147 INCHES
WINTER MOVEMENT, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 67 X 122 INCHES
NUDE IN AUBERGINE, 1993, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 48 X 36 INCHES
Herbert Creecy liberated himself through the act of painting, what might be understood as a cognizance of temporality, an acute awareness of time. This might further suggest that his art carried with it a direct philosophical sense of being. It is possible that he understood his role as a painter as someone living through a moment in history wherein his art could be likened to a kind of existential realization that gave attention to himself and his mortality as being integral to the act of painting.
- Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
BLUE NUDE, 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 48 X 48 INCHES
SWIM, 1991, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 62 X 53 INCHES
LAPIS BLOOM, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 56 X 32 INCHES
BLUE SHADE, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 51 X 51 INCHES
ENIGMA, 1989 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 60 X 48 INCHES
ECLIPSE, 1995, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 48 X 56 INCHES
AS ABOVE, SO BELOW, 1996, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 36 X 26 INCHES
VALHALLAII (2), 1996, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 24 X 24 INCHES
VALHALLAII (1), 1996, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 24 X 24 INCHES
FOUNDATION, 1992, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 18 X 18 INCHES
Even though Herbert Creecy hewed to a consistent vocabulary of shapes and forms throughout his career, the paintings drawn from private collections as well as Atlanta’s High Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia show a remarkable variety. The artist manipulated the palette, the density and the quantity of marks and shapes, as well as the amount of impasto (thickness of the paint), to create an array of moods and personalities.
Many of the paintings read like landscapes, some with obvious references. But they more often made me think about music. If Jackson Pollock was Creecy’s spiritual mentor, Wassily Kandinsky (who linked abstraction and music) must be in there somewhere too. These paintings are orchestral compositions. Passages recall crescendo and glissando, andante, and allegro.
- Catherine Fox (Atlanta, 2003)
SHIELD, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 83 X 84 INCHES
Many of Herbert Creecy’s most powerful pieces utilize scale to hold the space and command the viewer’s attention. Much like his action Painting predecessors. Creecy wanted his work to push the boundaries of gallery walls, challenging the viewer’s field of vision and physical reach. Most works surpass the six – foot mark. A size where the human form becomes inferior to the work of art and where the psychological weight of the image imposes not just physically. Consider the square described by Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man – these pieces reside outside the box of human reach.
MANIFEST DESTINY, 1990 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 67 INCHES
PINK REALM, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 60 X 48 INCHES
TEMPORAL DIMENSIONS, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 29 X 38 INCHES
Creecy combined dynamic qualities with atmospheric ones, giving paintings a remarkable tendency to accent three dimensions. Subtleties, which are lost when seen by photograph, include his control of multiple layers of paint and the combination of gloss and matte paints to accent depth.
All Creecy’s paintings have unique “window like” quality, with no formal boundary of design. The fact that no design is enclosed increases the painting’s inclination to seem sculptural and full of activity. And with no freedom to jump or step out into the area, the background is also strengthened. This unusual quality of openness, or freedom, encourages the viewer to investigate the work, and undoubtedly has contributed used to the popularity of Creecy’s paintings. These works are widely found in collections of corporations, respected museums, and individuals.
Leanne B. Heath (Southern Homes, 1989)
JUDITH’S POND, 1989 - 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 71 X 68 INCHES
CONCUBINE, 1992 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 76 INCHES
CAVE, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 48 X 60 INCHES
HOODED HEAP, 1985, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 41 X 46 INCHES
SHEBA, 1988, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 41 X 47 INCHES
“My perspective on the paintings of Creecy is that the sensibility of being “now” is what constitutes the present, which comes alive for anyone who makes the time to see his work as a contemporary experience that never goes away.” Through a heightened awareness of himself in the act of painting, Herbert Creecy found a way to emancipate the hidden recesses of form. By necessitating the presence of form, he allowed painting to become his painting – a subjective involvement not only for himself, but for his viewers as well. - Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
IN TWO DIMENSION, 1976 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 36 X 34 INCHES
ESSENCE, 2002, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 30 X 30 INCHES
ORACLE, 2002, OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 41 X 41 INCHES
JUNGLE HAUNT, 1992 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 57 X 48 INCHES
The totality of an artist’s work, as in the case of Herbert Creecy, is difficult to summarize in that the diversity is often what clarifies the painterly sensibility rather than exterior notions of how paintings conform to one another.
With Creecy, there is little in the way of conformity, which may read as an attribute that gives his work its ultimate strength. As I have chosen to speak about the artist’s sensibilities as a painter as being in the present, the issue is not about the literal present but about “now” as opposed to the past being “then.”
My perspective on the paintings of Creecy is that the sensibility of being “now” is what constitutes the present, which comes alive for anyone who takes the time to see his work as a contemporary experience that never goes away.
- Robert C. Morgan (New York, 2019)
DILUVIAL, 1993 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 52 X 52 INCHES
WAR, 2001 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 84 X 96 INCHES
A NEW AGE, 1998, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 51 X 51 INCHES
RISE OF THE WESTERN WORLD, 1999, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 60 X 60 INCHES
SYNCOPATION, 1997, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 60 X 119 INCHES
THE TRANSPORT SERIES (1985 - 1997)
In his “Transport Series”, Creecy seems to have foreseen the convergence of quantum theory, mysticism / spirituality and break throughs in genetics and bio - engineering.
The entire series is possessed with an otherworldliness that seems to imply a recognition of communication between spheres of consciousness. These works almost seem transported to us from a future time or higher dimension; or transport us there.
Herbert Creecy was originally best known as a colorist. But an impressive body of work evolved from that; a more contemplative and introspective series of paintings which was characterized by a far more distilled, sparse, and monochromatic presentation of his technical virtuosity.
YUKIMI’S ROSE, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 66 INCHES
DOMINION, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 67 X 57 INCHES
Hebert Creecy was painting process personified. His course was always marked by exceptions: he was a colorist, but he made some monochromatic works; he was an abstractionist, but he made some representational works. He favored dispersed compositions, but he made some images with centralized elements. He was a painter, but he made sculptures, toys and “things.” In short, he was uncontainable except in the way that we will all be contained someday.
-Dan R.Talley ( 2016 ), Professor, Fine Arts Kutztown University, PA
CREVICE, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 68 X 79 INCHES
“The true work of art is born from the ‘artist’: a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being.”
- Wassily Kandinsky
TRANSPORT, 1995 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 46 INCHES
LANDING, 1995 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 46 INCHES
Art does not want the representation of a beautiful thing, but the representation of something beautiful.
- Immanuel Kant
LANDING, 1995 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 46 INCHES
ANU, 1985 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 62 X 53 INCHES
MANTIS, 1995, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 56 X 42 INCHES
DIVA, 1991, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 68 X 60 INCHES
INCEPTION, 1992 - 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 79 X 68 INCHES
“As God creates, so man can create. Given a certain intensity of will, and the shapes created by the mind become subjective. Hallucinations, they are called, although to their creator they are real as any visible object is to any one else. Given a more intense and intelligent concentration of this will, and the form becomes concrete, visible, objective; the man has learned the secret of secrets; he is a MAGICIAN.”
Madame Helena P Blavasky (Founder | Theosophy)
VIOLET OCTAVE, 1995 - 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 81 X 66 INCHES
BLADE, 1993 OIL AND ACRYLIC ON CANVAS 69 X 26 INCHES
SPARTAN, 1977 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 69 X 91 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES (1993 - 1999)
Creecy explored the female form, with an explosive eroticism that reflected his passionate, often tempestuous romantic relationships.
In Creecy’s universe, feminine was liquid mercury - dazzling to behold, arousing man’s most primal and exalted instincts; at the same time capable of driving a man to either ecstasy or madness.
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : DREAMS OF BUDAPEST, 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 32 X 33 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : THE OFFERING, 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 34 X 39 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : DREAMS OF BUDAPEST, 1996, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 32 X 33 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : THE CONSUMMATION, 1995, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 30 X 47 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : TITILLATION, 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 27 X 36 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : BLACK DAHLIA, 1996 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 30 X 37 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : NUDE IN ECSTASY, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 34 X 34 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : MORNING OF THE GREEN MIST, 1996 - 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 66 X 60 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : THE SURRENDER, 1999 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 35 X 30 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : INSATIABLE, 1993 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 62 X 53 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : THE AFTERMATH, 1996, OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 32 X 33 INCHES
NOCTURNAL DESIRES : JADE NUDE, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 62 X 53 INCHES
THE LONGING, 1992 - 1995 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 23 X 34 INCHES
Herbert Creecy has been consistently and obsessively painting since 1960s. He has rightfully earned his place as one of Georgia’s leading artist. His work is gestural and emotive, rooted in abstract expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s but with a twist that is his alone. A son of South, his work has maintained a vitality relevance and freshness throughout the decades that testifies to his energetic vision and creative drive.
NIGHT SPOTS, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 25 X 25 INCHES
Creecy was most associated with his signature multicolor, fingerpaint-ish squiggles arrayed in dense, all over compositions. But he hardly limited himself to that approach. A constant tinkerer, he had recently experimented with applying paint through an industrial air compressor, which created doughnut shapes that melted at the edges. He incorporated scraps of old paintings as collage.
His paintings could even be unexpectedly spare. And they might not be totally abstract: References to architecture and landscape were quite direct in some of Creecy’s paintings, a suggestion of his connection to the region of his birth. Whatever might have been, there is no denying what is: powerful paintings that celebrate the artistic process and the physicality of paint.
- Catherine Fox (Atlanta, 2003)
THE YEARNING, 1998 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 26 X 26 INCHES
Crecy paints big, Creecy pains bold. As a sensualist, he does not approach his work intellectually although his paintings are deeply informed by his intelligence. A Creecy painting fills and inhabits its canvas, reveling in and combating its two-dimensionality. His forays into other media, including sculpture, are extensions of his paintings, and his aggressive application of paint with brushes, sticks, and air guns is decidedly masculine. He is a colorist, but he has created bodies of work with limited or even monochromatic palettes. Creecy takes his cues from the world around him so he depicts life, war, chaos, and even love; on occasion we can clearly discern references to land and to nature, and it is in those paintings that we can best see and taste the South. Ultimately, however, his work is art itself.
PLAYGROUND, 1997 OIL, ACRYLIC, COLLAGE AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS 26 X 26 INCHES
BIO EDUCATION 1960 – 1964 Atlanta College of Art; Atlanta, GA 1964 S.W. Hayter Atelier 17, Paris 1958 – 1960 University of Alabama; Tuscaloosa, AL
SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2018 A Legend Rediscovered, Bill Lowe Gallery, Atlanta, GA 2010 Herbert Creecy, The Jacqueline C. Hudgens Center for the Arts; Duluth, GA 2008 Promised Gifts from the Herbert Creecy Estate, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA); Atlanta, GA Paintings from the 1990s, Mason Murer Fine Art; Atlanta, GA 2007 Selected Works, Madison-Morgan Cultural Center; Madison, GA Mixed Media and Works on Paper: Herbert Creecy, Mason Murer Fine Art; Atlanta, GA
SCEPTER, 1998,
OIL, ACRYLIC AND MIXED MEDIA ON CANVAS, 85 X 17 INCHES
2003 Herbert Creecy: Works from the Private Collections of the artist’s friends and patrons, MOCA GA; Atlanta, GA 2002 8th Annual Masters Series: Herbert Creecy: Curves, Swerves and Repetitions, City Gallery East; Atlanta, GA 1995 Herbert Creecy: Connectedness, Zinc Contemporary Art; Bluewater Bay, FL 1991 Herbert Creecy: Shakin’ Shanty 1982 – 1990, Wade Gallery; Los Angeles, CA Shakin’ Shanties ’83 – ’90, Novus, Inc.; Atlanta, GA 1990 Novus Gallery, Inc; Atlanta, GA Recent Paintings, Wade Gallery; Los Angeles, CA 1989 Herb Creecy, Alexander Gallery; Atlanta, GA 1988 Paintings 70s through 80s, Lamar Dodd Art Center, LaGrange College; LaGrange, GA Works on Paper, Highland Gallery; Atlanta, GA 1987 Paintings and Things ’66 – ’88, Nexus Contemporary Art Center; Atlanta, GA 1986 Herbert Creecy: Recent Paintings, Patricia Carega Gallery; Washington, DC 1984 Fay Gold Gallery; Atlanta, GA
GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2019 Southern Thunder, Bill Lowe Gallery - Masterworks by Herbert Creecy, Thorton Dial, Michael David, Jimmy O’ Neal, Steven Seinberg and Maggie Hasbrouck; Atlanta, GA 2010 Twenty Georgia Masters, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA); Atlanta, GA 2010 Recent Acquisitions, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA); Atlanta, GA 2006 Light-Sound Intersections: Structure and Movement in Space and Time, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (MOCA GA); Atlanta, GA 2005 MOCA Majors (from the permanent collection of MOCA GA), MOCA GA; Atlanta, GA 2004 Wayne Kline and the Rolling Stone Press, MOCA GA; Atlanta, GA 2004 Selected Works: State of Georgia Art Collection, MOCA GA; Atlanta, GA 2002 Artists of the Heath Gallery: 1965 to 1998, MOCA GA; Atlanta, GA Georgia Triennial, Telfair Museum of Art; Savannah, GA 2001 Important Georgia Masters: Ed Moulthrop and Herbert Creecy, SunTrust Gallery; Atlanta, GA 1997 Progressive Art for a Progressive Alabama, The Partners Gallery of The Business Center of Alabama; Montgomery, AL Lithographs of Work by Atlanta College of Art Alumni, ACA Gallery 100 1993 Perspectives of Contemporary Art: Herbert Creecy, Sidney Guberman, Jim Touchton, Swan Coach House Gallery; Atlanta, GA 1992 10th Anniversary Visiting Artists Exhibition, Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN 1992 Original Stone (lithograph printed at the Rolling Stone Press), Gwinnett Council of Art; Lawrenceville, GA
1991 Selected Lithographs by Southern Artist (lithograph printed at Rolling Stone Press), Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama; Tuscaloosa, AL In and About Atlanta, Nexus Contemporary Art Center; Atlanta, GA 1993 Perspectives of Contemporary Art: Herbert Creecy, Sidney Guberman, Jim Touchton, Swan Coach House Gallery; Atlanta, GA 1992 10th Anniversary Visiting Artists Exhibition, Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN 1992 Original Stone (lithograph printed at the Rolling Stone Press), Gwinnett Council of Art; Lawrenceville, GA 1991 Selected Lithographs by Southern Artist (lithograph printed at Rolling Stone Press), Moody Gallery of Art, University of Alabama; Tuscaloosa, AL In and About Atlanta, Nexus Contemporary Art Center; Atlanta, GA Visiting Artist Exhibition: Painters Karen Shaw and Herb Creecy, Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture, University of Tennessee; Knoxville, TN 1990 Master Prints from the Rolling Stone Press, Wesleyan College; Macon, GA Gesture/Fluidity/The Stroke, Chastain Gallery; Atlanta, GA Herbert Creecy and Whitney Leland: New Work, Cumberland Gallery; Nashville, TN 1989 Retrospective Show, Rolling Stone Press, Columbia Museum of Art; Columbia, SC Selected Lithographs from the Rolling Stone Press, Columbus Museum of Art; Columbus, GA 1988 Fall Exhibition, Swan Coach House Gallery; Atlanta, GA 1988 Rolling Stone Press: Southeastern Artists, Student Center Gallery, Georgia Institute of Technology; Atlanta, GA
CORPORATE AND PRIVATE COLLECTIONS
Mead Packaging Corporation; Atlanta, GA King & Spalding; Atlanta, GA Alston & Bird; Atlanta, GA Troutman Sanders; Atlanta, GA Kilpatrick Stockton; Atlanta, GA Paul Hastings; Atlanta, GA McKenna, Long & Aldridge; Atlanta, GA Powell Goldstein; Atlanta, GA Kutak Rock; Atlanta, GA Shearson Lehman Hutton American Express, Inc; Atlanta, GA Bank South; Atlanta, GA Waverly Hotel; Atlanta, GA Richard B. Russell Federal Building; Atlanta, GA Surf Air; Atlanta, GA Portman Properties; Atlanta, GA Barton Protective Services Inc; Atlanta, GA Patio Restaurant; Atlanta, GA Marra’s Restaurant; Atlanta, GA Marriot Marquis; Atlanta, GA National Bank of Georgia; Atlanta, GA Wilma Southeast; Atlanta, GA J.B. Sadler Ltd; Glenview, IL Heery International; Atlanta, GA American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation; Chicago, IL McDonald Corporation; Oak Park, IL Alabama Power Company; Birmingham, AL First National Bank of Birmingham; AL Chase Manhattan Bank; New York, NY IBM Corporation; Raleigh, NC Federal Reserve Bank; Richmond, VA Jemison Investment Company; Birmingham, AL
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Wolf, Debra. Color Unfurled: The Joy is Palpable in Notable Georgia artist’s swirling, curving hues. Atlanta Journal Constitution. July 1, 2007.
Fox, Catherine. Creecy Through Thick and Thin. Atlanta Journal Constitution. July 27, 2003.
Millay, Amanda. Room to Remember: Collective exhibit honors Northside Artist. Northside Neighbor. July 16, 2003.
Fox, Catherine. Dynamic Art Mirrored Life of Herbert Creecy. Atlanta Journal Constitution. July 1, 2003
Nelson, Charles. Reviews Southeast: Atlanta (Georgia Triennial). Art Papers Magazine, July/August 2002.
Exhibition Catalogue, Georgia Triennial – Herbert Creecy, pages 19 -20, 2002.
Fox, Catherine. Bold, Beautiful & Brilliant: Herbert Creecy has a love affair with paint. Atlanta Journal Constitution, February 8, 2002.
Fox, Catherine. Something old, something new from 2 masters. Atlanta Journal Constitution. 2001.
Sanders, Luanne. Shack Showcase. Creative Loafing Atlanta. November 10, 1990. Pages 27 – 28.
Heath, Leanne B. The Town, The World. Southern Homes Magazine. Vol. 7 No. 3, (May/June 1989), pages 86 – 90.
Jinkler-Lloyd, Amy. Creecy Retrospective celebrates one man’s commitment to art. Atlanta Journal Constitution. March 17, 1988.
Boyd, Bill. Warehouse Is His Home, Studio. Telegraph. 1977.
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