Crawford / Taylor 2016

Carol Crawford

Tranfigurations

April 19 – May 14
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 21, 6-8pm / Musical performance by Caroline Kearney, Saturday, April 30, 7pm
Ms. Crawford will be present Thursdays 6-8 pm and Saturdays to speak to visitors about her work

Proud women, dancers, angels and monsters…each drawn figure is a statement of Ms. Crawford’s passionate involvement with the human body as a conveyor of mood, allegory, and ideas.

Most of the figures are solitary, occupying a space without boundaries or background, crouching or standing over six feet tall. “They are created using charcoal and pastel, occasionally interwoven with monoprint collage. Many are encased in layered acrylic shapes that float on the walls, frameless, casting their own shadows, commanding the space in which they are presented. The dancers are partially free-standing, their torsos stationary on the wall, their legs free-standing. As the viewer moves past, the dancers appear to subtly shift position.

“Fallen Angels”is a composite work composed of four male figures, performing beneath a broken sky: One angel with a grinning death’s head directs two winged figures, who leap blindly toward “heaven” at his command, while a fourth figure, created out of monoprint collage and mirror, remains earthbound, weeping and gazing upward at the goal he cannot reach, heaven, a puzzle that does not quite come together. Ms Crawford defines its meaning as “an allegory of corporate man, and a reference to the biblical myth of Lucifer, once the most beautiful angel, cast out of heaven for his arrogance. It is a metaphor of our own follies and earthly strivings”.

As Carol Crawford explains, “Each figure has a life of its own. They are not traditional figure studies, although in some cases I used a model; to me, they are invented people whose body language expresses their inner life, or purpose. The drawn lines change character to express my feeling toward each subject.”

Fallen Angels, tryptich:10’x15’,charcoal, pastel, watercolor collage, acrylic layers encasing each Fallen Angels, detail, tryptich:10’x15’,charcoal, pastel, watercolor collage, acrylic layers encasing each


Carol Taylor-Kearney

Arcadian Dreams

April 19 – May 14
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 21, 6-8pm / Musical performance by Caroline Kearney, Saturday, April 30, 7pm

Windows and doors are passageways, the means of observing two places at once. They carry the notion of entry and exit, inside and outside, interior and exterior, even physical and metaphysical.

The paintings on windows and doors in “Arcadian Dreams” are a view into a constructed world referencing childhood and Arcadia. Everyone experiences childhood and the stories of childhood become part of us, part of our personal myth. Similarly, Arcadia is a “real life” place in Greece and a mythic place of harmony with Nature that has been celebrated in poetry, painting, music, and dance for its simplistic beauty.

These are the stories. Beyond the stories are other concerns reflected three words often used by both environmentalists and creative types:

Recycle –of materials by using throwaways
Revival — of memories and stories conjured from old pictures
Renewal — by using art of the past as inspiration and even idioms in new art work.

TaylorKearney%2C-framedFramed World, 29″ x 29 “, oil on window (reverse painting on the glass) with collaged paper and screen.