While Craven first exhibited paintings of the moon in 1996, she began the current series of moon paintings�now numbering into the hundreds�in 2001, working on the rooftop of her Harlem studio, also in Maine, and most recently in France, during a fall 2007 artist residency. Each of the small, square (14 x 14 inches) canvases in this exhibition is a sequential variation on her theme�the moon is depicted in all its phases, with a wide range of atmospheric effects. The moon paintings, as writer Matt Keegan recently stated in Modern Painters (February 2007), explore, �repetition, systematization, permutation, and their intersections with time; a foregrounding of process.�
“Mauve, Naples yellow, and bone-white are among the colors Craven uses for the full or crescent moons in each of these 14-inch-square paintings. The 94 canvases here have been worked wet into wet, the lighter color of the half-dollar-size moons blurring into black or midnight-blue grounds, sometimes surrounded by attenuated halos or fractured by crooked tree branches. Craven’s wristy brushwork and misty hues transform oil paint into convincing atmospherics, the rich contrasts offering a sense of clear country air far from urban light pollution.” (via R.C. Baker in The Village Voice)
“Ann Craven: Moon Birds,” Knoedler, New York, NY. Through April 26.
Related post:
Ann Craven speaks in Cambridge
