Craig.htm

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"Every Man Builds His Own Cathedral of Sand"

Oil on Linen

72" x 48"

2007

"In Light of this Assembled Age"

Oil on Linen

60" x 40"
2007

"Whilst Gazing in the Mirror, Time, like Death, Gains
Ground"

Oil on Linen

34" x 24"

2006

"Waste Away"

Oil on Linen

60" x 40"

2006

"So Many Lost Horizons"

Oil on Linen

72" x 48"

2007

"Truth is Awash in Fiction"

Oil on Linen

54" x 36"

2007

"With Each Step Toward Understanding, the Will to Carrion"

Oil on linen

72" x 48 "

2007

"Blocking Out the Memory of You"

Oil on canvas

72" x 48"

2007

"Ascend A Fall"

Oil on Canvas

48" x 35"

2002

“Until the Ashes Black Out the Sun”

Oil on Canvas

38”x54”

2003

"Glaringly Empty"

Oil on Canvas

46" x 38"

2002

"Solace in What Remains"

Oil on Linen

48" x 35"

2004

“When One Obsesses Over the Surface, One Loses Sight of the Void Within”

Oil on Linen

48” x 70”

2004

“In Reticence, a Thousand Voices”

Oil on Linen

72” x 48”

2005

“Your Spirit is the Timepiece”

Oil on Linen

48”x72”

2004

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Morgan Craig

Artist Statement

He stood at the threshold of the room. Windows, on each side, beckoned him to enter. The sunlight filled each segment of the multi-paned window to his right, vibrant and viscous, like a basket of fresh peaches. He watched as the seraphic light surmounted the great hall, illuminating the detritus on the floor, warming the mottled ceiling, and chasing the shadows into the rafters and their respective corners. Behind cooing pigeons, their feathers ruffled by his unexpected entrance. How patiently the shadows would wait for the penumbra to return.

An Adagio or perhaps a piece by Satie, he thought, would augment the snowfall outside. The wind responded to his thoughts with a caterwaul: the hollow moan of a machine, and the creak of a fomented floorboard. Sheets of plastic, caught off guard, crackled and flapped on random windows like a distressed carnival tent. The lambent nature of the translucent plastic teased his eyes with an amalgam of yellows, oranges, violets and blues. In this symphony of sound and color, he surveyed what stood at antipodes with him: a woman.

Silhouetted by the sun, all he could see were what appeared to be red mittens on her hands, dusted in snow, like sugar on a strawberry. And like the snow all sense of doubt, as to who she was, melted from his mind. He shivered.

“Oh so evanescent,” she whispered.

Startled by the cadence of her voice, he remembered: the Victorian barn, the taste of her lips, the creek of each step, the risk of getting caught, and the setting sun as his hands traveled up and down her back not knowing what to do or where to go. For an instant, he was lost, lost in a locus of his own invention: a young girl who never existed, a young man circumvented by endless summer nights, and a concatenation where remembrance was confused with the ideal.

“I am the only woman you will ever love. The paradise lost, the fulcrum of memory,” she stated rather lugubriously.

“You are…” he questioned flustered and flabbergasted: he knew who she was, the same apparition he had witnessed years ago in another factory, in another time.

“Nostalgia,” she said.

He blinked, and she was gone.

A deflagration upon the brackish waters of existence, beauty cannot be rushed; it needs time to dress itself in the guise of fiction.

____________________________________________

Biography

Morgan Craig has taken upon the arduous task of facilitating the subject of art to the students at Roberto Clemente Middle School, a Title 1 school, in North Philadelphia. He received his BFA with teacher’s certification from Tyler School of Art, and his MFA from University of the Arts. Craig has exhibited throughout the U.S.A. and Canada, including OK Harris in New York City, the LIPA Gallery in Chicago, the Delaware Center for Contemporary Arts and Murray State University in the bluegrass state of Kentucky. Ricco/Maresca Gallery in New York, and Lawrence Asher Gallery in Los Angeles currently represent him.

At the beginning of 2006, Craig received the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Individual Grant. Over the summer, he was a resident at the Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Winter of 2006/2007 has brought with it Scope Miami, and solo exhibitions at both the University of Wisconsin, and Lawrence Asher Gallery. Morgan finds repose in Philadelphia.

Craig’s intent is to continue to convey his concept of lost and found time through semiotics: his paintings being the sign or symbol. The French author Marcel Proust once said that “painters” were the most capable, when it came to “representing reality:” the fiction we claim to have lived. May this trajectory of whimsy, live on.

Education

University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA
Masters of Fine Arts in Painting, December, 2003

Tyler School of Art, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA
Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting, with Teacher Certification, January, 2000

Exhibitions

2007

Lawrence Asher Gallery, Milieu
April 2007, Los Angeles, CA

The University of Wisconsin, Solo Exhibition
January – March 2007, Madison, WI

City Arts Center, Solo Exhibition
May 2007, Oklahoma City, OK

Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts,
Two-Person Exhibition
March 2008, Omaha, NE

2006

Exhibitions in 2006
Scope Miami, Ricco Maresca Gallery
December 2006 Miami, FL

Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts,
The Painted Interior, 3 Person Exhibition
October 2006– February 2007 Wilmington, DE

The Philadelphia Art Alliance, Solo Exhibition
September – December, Philadelphia, PA

Lawrence Asher Gallery, Summer Survey
July – August, Los Angeles, CA

State Museum of Pennsylvania, Art of the State
June – September Harrisburg, PA

South Bend Regional Museum of Art,
Two-Person Exhibition
June - September South Bend, IN

Artworks Gallery, Solo Exhibition
April, Cincinnati, OH

Bettcher Gallery, Two-Person Exhibition
February Miami, FL

University of Mary Washington, 2006 Mid Atlantic New Painting
January - March, Fredericksburg, VA

Affif Gallery, City As Nature
January 2006, Philadelphia, PA

Lawrence Asher Gallery, 3 Person Exhibition
January 2006, Los Angeles, CA

Miami University, Young Painters Competition for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award
January – February, Oxford, OH

2005

New Philadelphia Realism, Seraphin Gallery
October-November 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Bettcher Gallery, Group Exhibition
October 2005 Miami, FL

Penn State University, Altoona, Solo Exhibition
September – October 2005 Altoona, PA

Combined Talents: Florida International,
Florida State University, Museum of Fine Arts
August-September 2005 Tallahassee, FL

Redux Contemporary Art Center, Solo Exhibition
August – September 2005 Charleston, SC

14th International Exhibition, Harford Art Association
July 2005 Havre de Grace, MD

1000 Walls Gallery
2005 Chicago, IL

SUMFA 10, University of the Arts
June 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Voxennial, VoxPopuli Gallery
June 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Summer Invitational Exhibition, OK Harris
May 28 – July 15, 2005 New York, NY

Cambridge Art Association National Prize Show
May 6 – June 23, 2005 Cambridge, MA

Second International ARC Salon Competition
April 2005 Web and Catalogue Publication

Kentucky National 2005, Murray State University
March 8 – April 1, 2005 Murray, KY

29th Juried Show, Allentown Art Museum
March 6 – May 15, 2005 Allentown, PA

7th Annual Realism International Juried Exhibition, Upstream People Gallery

Structure II “Architecture in Drawing and Painting,” Gallery Katz
January – February 2005 Boston, MA

7th Annual All Media Exhibition, Upstream People Gallery
January 2005 Omaha, NE

2004

Wegway Third Annual International, Propeller Centre for the Visual Arts, Toronto, ON, Canada

70th Regional Exhibition, Arnot Art Museum,
Elmira, NY

Avalanche 2004, Juried Exhibition, Avalanche Gallery.

New York, NY

A Sense of Place, Gertrude Herbert Institute of Art
Augusta, GA

Back to Front: Emerging Artists, Slought Foundation
Philadelphia, PA

Alpan International, Juried Exhibition, Alpan Gallery
Huntington, New York.

8th Annual Summer Summit, L. I. P. A. Gallery
Chicago, IL

New Blood 3, Invitational, Finer Things Gallery
Nashville, TN

La Colombe TorreFaction
Philadelphia, PA

Awards

Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation
Residency June-July 2007, Norton Island, ME

Macdowell Colony Fellowship
Residency July-August 2007, Peterborough, NH

2006 Pennsylvania Council on the Arts

Bemis Center for the Contemporary Arts
Residency July-September 2006 Omaha, NE

Best in Show, 14th International Exhibition,
Harford Art Association
July-August 2005 Havre de Grace, MD

Second Place, 29th Juried Show
Allentown Art Museum
March-May 2005, Allentown, PA

Award of Excellence and
two Awards of Special Recognition
Upstream People Gallery, Omaha, NE

O’Hern Family Memorial Award
December 2004 70th Regional Exhibition, Arnot Art Museum

The University of the Arts Merit Scholarship
2000 – 2003

Publications

New American Paintings, Volume 69

April 2007 Juror: Stephen Phillips, Curator, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.

Harper’s Magazine

September 2006

American Art Collector Magazine
February 2006
Emerging Artists Calendar
2006 Distributed Nationally

The William and Mary Review
2005 College of William and Mary

New American Paintings, Volume 57
April 2005 Juror: Jonathan Binstock, Curator of Contemporary Art, Corcoran Museum of Art,
Washington D.C.

Direct Art Magazine. Fall/Winter 2004

New American Paintings MFA Annual.
December 2003 Juror: Lawrence Rinder, Curator,
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Bibliography

Yasiejko, Christopher, “The Painted Interior,” Wilmington News Journal 10 Dec. 2006

Dukes, Howard, “Salvage Work”, South Bend Tribune 27 Aug. 2006: D4.

James, Laura, “Morgan Craig”, Cincinnati City Beat 21 Apr. 2006:50.

Rose, Joshua, “Morgan Craig”, American Art Collector Feb. 2006:192-193.

Smith, Nick “New Work by Morgan Craig”, Charleston City Paper 17 Aug. 2005: 50.