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. Throughout her career spanning over 20 years, she has participated in numerous solo exhibitions across the United States and Germany, including the Museum of the University of Mississippi; Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas; Sears Peyton Gallery, New York; Washington and Lee University, Virginia; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York; Taylor Bercier Fine Art, New Orleans; James F. Byrnes Institute, Stuttgart, Germany; Pan American Art Projects, Dallas, TX; Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle; The Foyer, Munich, Germany; Maine College of Art; and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. Her work has been included in a plethora of group exhibitions and in the collections of many institutions and organizations, including the Brooks Museum of Art; The Arkansas Arts Center; Music City Center, Nashville; Austin Peay State University, Clarksville; Charles Hotel, Munich; FedEx; First Bank, Nashville; NexAir; Pfizer Corporation; St. Mary’s Episcopal School and The Assisi Foundation in Memphis. She has received numerous awards, grants and residencies, including the Tennessee Artist Fellowship from Austin Peay State University; an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Tennessee Arts Commission; Artist in Residence at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, Germany; Artist in Residence at Maine College of Art; and sculpture and painting residencies at the Vermont Studio Center.
