Ann Craven
'Twelve Moons'
Ann Craven paints en plein air to create exuberant depictions of the moon and night sky. These small canvases document the lunar conditions she observes at specific moments and become the source for her larger monumental compositions. Painting in a lush, sensuous palette, Craven describes the moment just past, her memories, and subjective personal experience. For her largest exhibition of these works to date, the artist transforms the gallery into a panorama representing the cycles of the moon, captured over the course of the 2022 lunar year. The works on view reveal both the serial nature of the artist’s larger endeavor and the myriad meanings the moon can convey. Collectively, they chronicle a distinct chapter in her ongoing process to creatively and beautifully encapsulate the wonders of the natural phenomena that surround us.
Ann Craven paints en plein air to create exuberant depictions of the moon and night sky. These small canvases document the lunar conditions she observes at specific moments and become the source for her larger monumental compositions. Painting in a lush, sensuous palette, Craven describes the moment just past, her memories, and subjective personal experience. For her largest exhibition of these works to date, the artist transforms the gallery into a panorama representing the cycles of the moon, captured over the course of the 2022 lunar year. The works on view reveal both the serial nature of the artist’s larger endeavor and the myriad meanings the moon can convey. Collectively, they chronicle a distinct chapter in her ongoing process to creatively and beautifully encapsulate the wonders of the natural phenomena that surround us.
About the artist
Ann Craven (b. 1967, Boston, Mass.) is known for her lush, serial portraits of the moon, birds, and flowers, as well as her painted bands of color. After completing each work, she dates and titles each palette, rendering it a unique and isolated index of her process. Craven’s predilection for the copy — both from referent photographs and from her own plein air paintings — is both an homage to Pop Art and an exploration of remembrance. As she explains, “My paintings are a result of mere observation, experiment, and chance, and contain a variable that is constant and ever-changing — the moment just past.” Craven presented her first retrospective, titled TIME and curated by Yann Chevalier, at Le Confort Moderne in Poitiers, France, in 2014. Recent solo exhibitions include Karma, New York; the Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Southard Reid, London; and Maccarone, New York, among others. Craven’s paintings are held in the public collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine; and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, among others.
Install Views
Credits
Twelve Moons is organized by SCAD Museum of Art chief curator Daniel S. Palmer and presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2023.
