Chiaroscuro is pleased to present Gayle Crites’ fifth solo exhibition with us titled “Carried.” This new body of work consists of six largescale paintings on barkcloth, which are narrative abstractions that speak to duality in life.
Crites explains:
“Carried” reflects the profound impact of birth and death on my artistic vision at age 75. The recent passing of loved ones, juxtaposed with the birth of my first grandchildren, has ignited a deep exploration of life’s inherent duality.
These drawings and paintings on llanchama, a barkcloth from the Amazon rainforest, delve into the intertwined nature of creation and decay. The cycles of emergence and dissolution, so present in both the natural world and human experience, are captured through earth minerals, natural dyes, and raw soy milk – materials sourced from around the globe.” Crites continues to travel internationally sourcing tapa paper and collecting knowledge and natural and exotic ingredients to make her own paint, helping her express a unique artistic vision and sensabilitly . With regard to cochineal red in particular, one of Crites’ major works titled, “Then Now/Now Then”,was included in the traveling museum exhibition, The Red That Colored the World, organized by the Museum of International Folk Art, Santa Fe, NM. This exhibition included historic work by cultures and artists worldwide. The show was accompanied by a hardback reference volume, A Red Like No Other, which includes more than three hundred images and essays by a team of international experts. Crites’ piece, Then Now/Now Then, illustrated in A Red Like No Other, represents her contemporary practice of incorporating the ancient natural tints and tones of cochineal into her abstractions on tapa paper.
