Maysey Craddock

Best known for her visceral gouache paintings of ephemeral landscapes, Maysey Craddock examines the dualities and mysteries of nature and those relationships to space and time. Through saturated earth tones and translucent elemental layers, she depicts the spaces in between, the interactions of nature and architecture, and what happens beyond the grasp of human control. Her scenes are dense and fluid, with trees, rivers, and roots figuring prominently as metaphors of the eternal cycles of death and rebirth, and the inevitability of entropy. Beginning with photographs, her process layers intricate drawings and performative painting onto found objects (typically brown paper bags that have been carefully embroidered together) - a conceptual regeneration mirroring the geological processes she depicts. Like the cycles of the sun, her work transports the viewer into a meditative place that is nostalgic and rhythmic, yet fragile, hopeful, and wild - an opportunity to begin, again.

Maysey Craddock was born in 1971 in Memphis, TN and currently lives and works in Memphis. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art, Portland, ME and a BA in Sculpture and Anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans.

Courtesy of David Lusk Gallery