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.”
Related press: New York Times, Calgary Herald, Murray Whyte, Terence Dick, Globe and Mail, Press Release
