ECHO is Michael Craik's first solo exhibition at &Gallery, following a two-person show with Jeffrey Cortland Jones in 2018. For ECHO, Craik presents a new collection of contemplative, minimal acrylic paintings, which have been produced over the last year and continue his ongoing Veil and Vestige series.
Craik's practice explores the interplay of colour and the subtleties of light as a means of producing quiet, pared-down, reductive artworks, concerned with material quality and the act of making. He slowly and methodically produces each painting over a period of weeks and months by repeatedly applying and removing paint. This process of layering and uncovering features throughout his work, alluding to the passage of time and the forces of erosion that form our landscape. The focus of these works often lies at the edges, where sanding reveals glimpses of underlying paint or exposed bands of colour that have been built up by brushing, pouring or spreading. Combined, these processes produce subtle shifts in tone and hue that fade across the smooth, unblemished surface of each work. Veils of colour dissolve and melt into one another, creating illusory spaces that echo memories of light and place. Viewers are invited to pause, reflect and search for echoes of their own experiences in Craik's absorbing paintings.
Michael Craik was born in Edinburgh in 1972 and has worked as an artist in Scotland for over 20 years. He studied Fine Art at Gray's School of Art in Aberdeen before completing an MA in European Fine Art in Barcelona. A recipient of several awards, Craik's work has been widely exhibited internationally and is represented by galleries in Scotland, Germany, and the USA. He now works in Kinghorn, Fife, where his studio stands on a cliff overlooking the River Forth estuary. This closeness to where the sea meets the sky and the observation of the endless ebb and flow of the tide, has undoubtedly, over time, permeated Craik's artistic practice.
