Jason Craighead | Proof of Life
November 23rd, 2024 - Feb 8th, 2025 (extended )
Join K Contemporary and Jason Craighead on Saturday, November 23rd, 2024 from 3 - 6 PM for an opening reception at K Contemporary, located at 1412 Wazee Street, Denver, CO
Entitled Proof of Life, Jason Craighead’s first exhibition at K Contemporary reveals a painter inextricably linked physically and mentally to his practice. While his paintings are fundamentally abstract, he concedes a vague reference to craggy landscapes influenced by recent travels to Morocco and Newfoundland. They are potential landscapes, but not quite. This is because Craighead’s excursions in paint go beyond the literal to dwell in the metaphoric. He is mapping the greatest excursion of all – this thing called life. He sanguinely explains, “Without art, I’m not here and neither is what I create.”
Though very loose and expressionistic, Craighead’s work has a sense of gravity with forms suggesting horizons, miles traveled, and space. When he was in Morocco, he was at the foot of the Atlas Mountains, and when in Newfoundland, he was on the very edge of North America. The imposing cliffs, mountains, oceans, and rivers impressed him as he thought about nature and humans residing on a socio-environmental precipice. The thoughts weren’t grim, but honest observations of this moment in time where the dangerous and the beautiful coexist precariously. He sensed that the natural world was reflecting the human with its own version of turmoil and risk. This prevailing idea of being on the edge seeped into his work – the gnarly places you find between fear and excitement can be the very same places that ultimately allow you to feel safe. In this vein, Craighead’s mixed media paintings allow the viewer to hover on the edge of understanding.
The artist shares that, for him, “everything starts on the floor to get dirty”. Prior to raising a brush or attaching canvas to the wall, he unfurls it on the floor and walks over it contemplatively for several days. Craighead is literally a part of the work from the beginning and never confronts a proverbially “blank canvas”. His approach parallels Eastern traditions in that he is in a state of constant flow with the painting and never entirely in control. He is a willing participant, allowing things to emerge organically. It’s about becoming. If you look carefully, you'll detect footprints, dust, debris, wine spills, and the chi of Craighead’s life within the weave of the canvas. He considers this a “calculated accident.”
Joining the paint are fragments of text collaged from dictionaries and thesauruses. Craighead’s love of language and communication underlies the mixed media in his work. He finds text interesting, offering a chance to “run around a picture with your eyes and your brain.” But the text is never intended to be literal. He’s not searching for a precise word to telegraph an overarching idea. He considers the words and book pages as elements of the composition – a way to draw unconsciously with letters. Assemblage takes on more importance in recent work as he moves his creative energy beyond the 2D plane.
Jennifer Berry, Director, K Contemporary elaborates, “Jason muses that the most important thing between an audience and a painting is the space between the two. He doesn’t attempt to tell you something explicit or with great purpose, but rather offers an invitation to think, feel, and experience. What you bring to each painting is what you’ll get. Jason sets the example by bringing his whole self to each painting, so the viewer has access to it all. Each painting is a single piece of a greater creative process as much as it is a stand-alone entity.”
