Regarded as one of Canada’s most important painters (Canadian Art, winter 2005) Chris Cran has for more than two decades consistently reinvented his work, always questioned the optical mechanics of perception and thoroughly examined the urge to apprehend space and form in art. His many series have all been widely exhibited, reviewed and collected, from the Self-Portraits (1980s) that established Cran’s name in Canada to the subsequent Stripes, Half-Tone, Clear and Screen paintings through the 90s to the Abstracts and more recent Sublime Sales Series. Nancy Tousley has written that “Cran’s analysis of the rhetoric of painting is as clear-eyed as it is unsentimental about painting’s present condition. At the same time, he reaffirms revelation, beauty and new ways of seeing as jobs that painting can still do. Painting itself might be a commodity but in Cran’s work perception and beauty are non-consumable and fluid.” His work can be found in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Mendel Art Gallery, the Edmonton Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum and several; in the corporate collections of McCarthy Tétrault, Osler Hoskin Harcourt, Petro-Canada, Arcis Corporation and others along with many private collections.
Related press: Summer Silly Season - Globe and Mail, Canadian Art (Chris Cran: The Physics of Admiration), New York Times, Calgary Herald, Murray Whyte, Terence Dick, Globe and Mail, Chris Cran: Bright Spiral Standard
Installation view of "Chris Cran: Surveying The Damage 1977 - 1997", Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
Double Self-Portrait: Wanting to Know Why I Am Home So Late (1987)
oil on canvas,
96" x 66"
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