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May Issue 2007
2007 Piccolo Spoleto Invitational Features Works by Fletcher Crossman
The
City of Charleston Office of Cultural Affairs presents Illuminations
in the Shadows, a Piccolo Spoleto Invitational exhibition
featuring the work of Fletcher Crossman. The exhibition, on display
from May 18 to Aug. 18, 2007, at the City Gallery at Waterfront
Park, in Charleston, SC, opens in conjunction with the 2007 Piccolo
Spoleto Festival and will showcase Crossman's most recent work.
Crossman is a British painter, now based in Charleston. After completing a degree in Fine Art at Edge Hill College, UK, Crossman moved to London and worked for several years, subsidizing his painting with several jobs, including working for a record company, street performing, and clerking in the British House of Commons.
In the early 1990s, Crossman's work gained popularity with publishers from both the United States and England. His work was featured in books and calendars on both sides of the Atlantic. Crossman first exhibited his work at the Albert Memorial Museum in 1997 in Devon, England. Following the success of this exhibition, the Fulbright Program in Washington, DC, sponsored Crossman to take part in a one-year exchange to America in 1999. In both 2001 and 2002, the British Council sponsored Crossman to exhibit at the New York ArtExpo. In 2002, Crossman and his family decided to permanently move to the United States, where he has enjoyed a very successful artistic career.
In 2004, Crossman decided to focus his art in an entirely different direction. To escape the pressures of the art market, he withdrew all of his work from commercial galleries and retired to his studio for several months, studying the art of cave painters and experimenting with new techniques. A fresh approach to his work resulted, it included painting huge canvases only using a muted palette of the colors found naturally in earth and stone, a direct result of Crossman's in-depth examination of cave painting. He also placed a new emphasis on the meaning of his artwork, interweaving phrases within the imagery. The scale of the canvases - up to 10 feet high - and the vibrant textures of their surfaces give his new series of paintings a distinct physical presence.
Crossman's newest works have also garnered critical attention. In 2006, Crossman was awarded grants from the Puffin Foundation and the George Sugarman Foundation. His paintings of Holocaust survivors will be the centerpiece for the 2007 Yom HoShoah commemoration in Charleston.
Crossman's current paintings address such themes as September 11th, the Star Wars movies, SUV's, and the war in Iraq. He states that, "as a British artist living in the USA, my current work is a commentary on the country that has become by home. I am fascinated by the energy and abundance of America, but equally intrigued by the tensions that are casting clouds over contemporary American society. As a guest in this country I am constantly aware of the need to be guarded in my comments; it is only through these paintings that I am able to have a fully honest conversation with my host country. This collection is my forum to depict both the beauty and the darkness of modern America, as seen by an outside observer."
This collection of paintings is Crossman's "letter to America - a love letter at times, but at other times a cry of frustration. Like cave painters of the past, I have scrawled my feelings onto walls, albeit wall made of canvas, and I can only hope that I have managed to achieve some of the honesty and beauty in my work that they did in theirs."
The City Gallery at Waterfront Park is owned by the City of Charleston and managed by the Office of Cultural Affairs.
For more information check our SC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the gallery at 843/958-6484, e-mail to
(citygallery@ci.charleston.sc.us) or visit (www.piccolospoleto.com).
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