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Maysey Craddock has long been fascinated by ruin. The ephemeral quality so richly sewn into her paintings began with her childhood interest in searching for fossils at the edge of rivers or uncovering contents of forgotten drawers, always intent on discovering what came before – what once was. Craddock’s large-scale gouache paintings reference spaces in similar states; a landscape left to its own devices, crumbling structures, transformation, and natural entropy. Working from her own photographs, Craddock transfers her intricately drawn imagery onto found materials and carefully builds the surface with layers of paint, eventually revealing the bigger picture. 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.”
Craddock currently lives and works in Memphis, TN. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art (2003) and a BA from Tulane University (1993). For the past three decades, her work has been shown in galleries and institutions across the US and in Germany. Craddock has received fellowships including the APSU Tennessee Artist Fellowship and the Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship, and has participated in artist residencies both in the US and Germany, including the Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus in Schwandorf, Germany; the Vermont Studio Center Residency in Johnson, VT; and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in Amherst, VA. Craddock was a founding member of ArtsMemphis’ Artist Advisory Council and the ArtsAccelerator Grant for Individual Artists. She currently works from her studio in The Medicine Factory in downtown Memphis.
