&Gallery is looking forward to welcoming Scottish artist Michael Craik back for his third solo exhibition with the gallery.
The space in between is a place that often passes unnoticed, a zone of stillness, offering an opportunity to recalibrate before ones attention is redrawn. Such spaces may be physical or temporal, a gap separating two buildings or a momentary silence linking two passages of music. It could be short-lived, as in the turning of a page or continue for days or weeks between two connected actions. It could manifest as something physical, caught in our peripheral vision, unconsciously seen, yet informing our experience. Or a sound that encourages the mind to briefly wander from the task in hand. These spaces frame our focus and give it structure. They enable us to shift our view, see things afresh and take stock.
Such spaces are the building blocks of Michael Craik’s practice. For ten years he has worked from a coastal studio in Fife overlooking the Firth of Forth estuary, methodically creating his minimal paintings. Bordering this expansive body of ever-changing water and light, subconscious associations result in intuitive decisions that inform the colour and design for each painting. From the first idea to the final layer of paint, temporal spaces fill the gaps created by a repetitive process of brushing, pouring, sanding and waiting. During such intervals, new directions materialise, leading to alterations in hue, saturation and tone. At a basic level Craik is painting space. With his Veil series, paint is slowly applied in layers of alternating translucent colour that dissolve into one another across the surface, creating illusory fields of light. Each work is bounded by a thin, saturated band of colour that runs around the edge of the painted surface. Craik’s pared-back artworks do not offer the viewer a subject or direction. Instead, his subtly constructed chromatic fields offer tranquil vistas, where the onlooker is invited to pause and reflect.
Craik’s exhibition The Space In Between will also present a series of small scale works that recently came to fruition. The idea for this new body of work was conceived in 2016 when he presented a solo exhibition in Kyoto. These sculptural, wall-based artworks are constructed with sustainably-sourced, native timbers combined with painted surfaces and resin. Each work constitutes a reimagined fragment of an encounter with the traditional architecture and gardens of Japan. Craik describes them as visual compartments, fashioned by the recollection of geometry, material, form and colour from the recesses of memories. To the viewer they could be interpreted as either representations or abstractions of remembered places but in Craik’s mind they occupy the space in between.
The Space In Between is Michael Craik’s third solo exhibition with &Gallery. He was born in Edinburgh in 1972 and has worked as an artist in Scotland for over 28 years. Craik 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, The Netherlands, Spain and the USA.
The text was provided by the gallery.
