Tim Craighead: New Paintings

TIM CRAIGHEAD

New Paintings

TIM CRAIGHEAD: New Paintings

TIM CRAIGHEAD: New Paintings Exhibition: November 1 - November 30, 2017 Reception for the Artist: Saturday November 4, 5:30 - 7:30 pm Front Cover: Orchard Series, Drift #2, diptych, detail, 2017, 60 x 108 in, oil, alkyd on canvas Back Cover: Orchard Series #3, 2017, 60 x 54 in, oil, alkyd on canvas Photo Credit: R.R.Jones Essay by Donna Seager Catalog Design by Donna Seager Direct all inquiries to: Seager Gray Gallery 108 Throckmorton Ave. Mill Valley, CA 94941 All rights reserved.

You must forget all your theories, all your ideas before the subject.

What part of these is really your own will be expressed in your expression of the emotion awakened in you by the subject.

- Henri Matisse

Orchard Series, Drift #2, 2017, diptych, 60 x 108 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

It has been said that some paintings are a conversation and some are an argument. “And some,” says artist Tim Craighead, “are an all out war.”

He was referring to his mammoth painting “Orchard Series, Drift #2”, a 60” x 108” oil on canvas diptych. He had thought himself finished with it, but something in it just didn’t ring true. “I try to paint what I believe in, eliminating any marks or images which feel disingenuous, listening to what the painting is telling me to do rather than imposing my will on the work.” His interplay between vaguely representational symbols and pure abstraction allows him to get beyond what we see and into a more mystical realm that doesn’t seek to define itself literally. It is a slippery edge to navigate and Craighead has spent a lifetime examining its possibilities.

Craighead’s process is rigorous. He is plagued by demanding demons – a kind of honesty police. He is skilled, both as a painter and a printmaker and could easily produce pleasing works, but it is that something just beyond reach that compels him. Constructing paintings which operate on the borders of cognition provides an open field upon which a multitude of memories and meanings might be triggered. These paintings contain personal narratives, but in their abstraction he hopes to create enough room that others might be provoked to enter them with their own memories.

The Orchard Series was inspired by a small pocket orchard of 30 fruit trees and a beehive just outside his studio door. The seasonal changes, from winter dormancy to the bearing of fruit and the myriad of colors and textures presented throughout this cycle have influenced the works. The second body of work was inspired by time spent in Venice, Italy in the spring of 2016. This group of paintings is an attempt to capture the sights and sounds of that historic city-state. Throughout all the paintings is a love of paint and its inexhaustible ability to express the inexpressible. His efforts are not to describe but to conjure up the magic in the experience.

Orchard Series, #3, 2017, 60 x 54 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

The paintings in the Venice Series often have motifs of ornamental ironwork patterns, reminiscent of Matisse’s window series from Collioure where the structured patterns miraculously convey the velvety passage of Mediterranean air. In Craighead’s work it is the humid and ancient atmosphere of the city of canals. In the painting “Venice Venus,” a single rose, taken from those depicted in Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” drifts down, a shout out to Italian painting and the Renaissance.

Finally, there are the paintings “Box” and “Brood Box” in which simple lines create a deconstructed floating box. The lines and shape of the box have an effect much like the ironwork motifs in the Venice paintings – they create a structure that enhances the more atmospheric quality of the paintings. They operate like a portal allowing the viewer to experience the sensational qualities of the paint and the richness of pure pigment.

Five of the thirteen paintings in the exhibition are large – 5 feet tall or taller. They invite you to suspend disbelief for a moment and enter the world of the painting with the artist as your guide. There is something lost in reducing them to a computer screen or catalog page. The hope is that you will visit the exhibition and see them in person to get the full effect of this extraordinary body of work.

In Craighead’s own words, “My paintings operate somewhere between abstraction and the cognitive world, between the unknown and the known.

The works often begin with a general idea. I might be reflecting on spiritual or corporal concerns, memory or whatever occupies my thoughts at the moment. Once the first marks are initiated all bets are off about the outcome. In this way, it is my hope that the paintings aren’t driven self-consciously. The goal is that they emerge from a more enigmatic, less familiar place. In the process of painting, initiation, manipulation and removal of marks becomes one of action and reaction. The paintings emerge slowly, one on top of the other, until they tell me I am done.”

- Donna Seager, October, 2017

Orchard Series, #6, 2017, 40 x 30 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

Orchard Series, #7, 2017, 40 x 30 in, oil and alkyd on linen

Orchard Series, #8, 2017, 60 x 54 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

The Conversation, 2016, 72 x 90 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

Venice Blue, 2016, 46 x 36 in, oil and alkyd on linen

Venice Series #3, 2017, 40 x 30 in, oil and alkyd on linen

Venice Series #8, 2017, 46 x 36 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

Venice Venus, 2017, 40 x 30 in, oil and alkyd on linen

Without Constantini, 2016, 46 x 36 in, oil and alkyd on linen

Box, 2016, 72 x 60 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

Brood Box, 2017, 46 x 36 in, oil and alkyd on canvas

TIM CRAIGHEAD Born: Los Angeles, California Lives and works in Santa Cruz, California Education 1992-93 Post Graduate Fellow: Painting, Columbia University,

New York, NY 1991 M.F.A., Painting, Columbia University, New York, NY 1981 B.A., Printmaking and Sculpture,

University of California at Santa Cruz, CA Exhibitions 2017 Markings, Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA 2016 Dynamic Gestures: Action Art in the Twenty-First Century,

Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara, CA 2015 Nature as Abstract: The Orchard Series, New Paintings by Tim

Craighead, R.B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, CA

Contemporary Lyrical Abstraction, Seager/Gray Gallery,

Mill Valley, CA

Visual Language: Abstract Works, R.B. Stevenson Gallery,

La Jolla, CA 2014 Toriawase, San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art,

San Jose, CA Building Forward / Looking Back, de Saisset Museum,

Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA

Bridging Santa Cruz County: Spanning Fifty Years of

Printmaking, Cabrillo Gallery, Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA 2013 Sin Agua, Sin Vida, Museo de Arte Mazatlan, Sinoloa and

Galaria Ajolote, Guadalajara, Mexico

The Catamaran Show, Visual artists of the Catamaran, a

literary quarterly, R Blitzer Gallery, Santa Cruz, CA Alternative Approaches, RB Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, CA 2012 Tim Craighead, Trace: Paintings and Works on Paper, Gebert

Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM

Witness, Paintings and Works on Paper by Tim Craighead,

R. B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, CA

Art: A Bridge Beyond Borders – Innovations in Contemporary

Printmaking by Mexican and American Artists, Gallery Ajolote

Arte Contemporaneo, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

3 Painters, Tim Craighead, Frances McCormack and Mark

2011

2009

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

Perlman, R. B. Stevenson Gallery, La Jolla, CA Tim Craighead: Dos Mundos, An exhibition of paintings and works on paper. San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, San Jose, CA Rydell Visual Arts Fellows, Andrea Borsuk, Tim Craighead, Victoria May and Andy Ruble, Museum of Art and History, Santa Cruz, CA and Sanchez Art Center, Pacifica, CA Selections from the Smith Andersen Editions Archive, de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, CA Tim Craighead, New Paintings and Works on Paper, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Roll of the Dice, Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA Tim Craighead, Paintings and Works on Paper, Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA Tim Craighead, Recent Work, Smith Anderson Editions, Palo Alto, CA Painting, Faculty Works: Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz, California Small Matters, Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, TX Tim Craighead, Paintings and Works on Paper, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Painting As Inquiry, Gregory Amenoff, Gregory Botts, Tim Craighead, George McNeil and Paul Resika, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Multiple Personalities, Faculty Works, Cabrillo College, Aptos, CA 2004 Inside Out, Recent Work by Tim Craighead, Gerald Peters Gallery, Dallas, TX Yuma Symposium Exhibition, Yuma Fine Arts Museum, Yuma, AZ Three by Five to Eleven by Fourteen, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Tim Craighead, Recent Work, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Exemplary Contemporary, Monoprint /Monotype, Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, University of California, Santa Cruz, CA Living Proof, Contemporary Printmakers of Santa Cruz

2002

2001

1997 1992 1991 1983

1981

1986 1984

1983

1981

County, Pajaro Valley Arts Council & Gallery, Watsonville, CA Hot Off The Press, Smith Andersen Editions, Palo Alto, CA Lost and Found, Savage Gallery, Portland, OR Red, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM The Recourse of Painting, Recent Work by Tim Craighead, Gerald Peters Gallery, Santa Fe, NM Faculty Works: 2001, Mary Porter Sesnon Gallery, University of California at Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA Seven, Painting and Sculpture, The Heritage Fine Arts Collaborative, Heritage Bank of Commerce, San Jose, CA Vertigo, The Diaristic Works of Tim Craighead, Cabrillo College Gallery, Aptos, CA Fourth Flight, The Paintings of Tim Craighead, Horace Mann Gallery, Teacher’s College, New York, NY New Art, Wallach Gallery, Columbia University, New York, New Directions in Printmaking, Art Museum of Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz, CA. Curated by Henry Hopkins, Chief Curator of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art California Printmaking, A Survey, Humbolt College, Arcata, California. Curated by Joseph Zucker Out on a Limb, Narrative Paintings by Tim Craighead, Art School Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA Tim Craighead, Woodcuts, Montalvo Center for the Arts, Saratoga, California. Curated by Henry Hopkins, Chief Curator of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art New Directions in Printmaking, Art Museum of Santa Cruz County, Santa Cruz, CA. Curated by Henry Hopkins, Chief Curator of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art California Printmaking, A Survey, Humbolt College, Arcata, California. Curated by Joseph Zucker

Awards / Honors / Published Projects 2012

2010

Artist in Residence, ICA Print Center, San Jose, CA publishing two editions of etchings.

Awarded Rydell Visual Arts Fellowship for 2011 , 20K Prize

2006

2005 2004

2003

2002

1997-00

1993

1993

1991-92

1989-91

Suite of Monotypes published by Smith Andersen Editions, Palo Alto, CA Presenter, 26th Annual Yuma Symposium, Yuma, AZ Visiting Artist Lecture Series, California State University, San Jose, CA Suite of Monotypes published by Taller de Gravat J.J. Torralba, Girona, Spain Suite of Monotypes published by Smith Andersen Editions, Palo Alto, CA Resident Artist, National Endowment for the Arts, Jazz Plus Initiative in conjunction with the Monterey Jazz Festival Panelist: “Program for Art on Film,” a joint venture of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, N.Y. and the J. Paul Getty Trust Hartley Platt-duPont Award for Excellence in the School of the Arts, Columbia University, New York, NY Shubert Presidential Fellowship, Columbia University, New York, NY Breevort-Eickemeyer Fellowship for Painting, Columbia University, New York, NY

Teaching Experience

1993-2011 Instructor in Art, Cabrillo College,

Aptos, California 1997-2009 Lecturer in Art, University of California at Santa Cruz, CA 1996-98 Visiting Professor of Art,

Stanford University, Stanford, California 1994-96 Instructor in Painting, Printmaking, and Drawing,

Monterey Peninsula College, Monterey, California 1993-95 Consulting Professor of Art, Stanford University,

Stanford, California 1993 Visiting Critic, Cooper Union School of Art,

New York, NY 1992-93 Lecturer in Painting, Columbia University,

New York, NY 1992 Visiting Critic, Parson’s School of Design,

New York, NY 1992 Visiting Critic, Graduate Film School, Columbia