Opening reception: Saturday, December 5, 10 am – 6 pm

Octavia Art Gallery is pleased to present a viewing room solo exhibition, Tim Craighead: The Cypher Series. This is the first exhibition at Octavia Art Gallery for the artist.

Craighead describes his work as inhabiting a space between objective and nonobjective painting. The combination of these two worlds, serve as a matrix for what are essentially autobiographical paintings. He is interested in the symbolic potential of the objective world and the possibilities abstraction presents in suggesting the unknown.

For a year in the mid-1990’s, circumstances forced Craighead out of his studio and he was left to work at a kitchen table on small pieces using water-based mediums. The work was primarily diaristic and that year was seminal in the development of the work he does today. The pieces were originally done on 12 x 9 inch watercolor blocks. Along the way, he discovered a more interesting hand-laid paper made in France at the Larroque mill.  The irregular edge of this paper resonated with his interest in nomadic carpets and kilims. Much in the same way the selvedge of these textiles echo the history of their making, this paper seemed to animate the field of play upon which the painting’s narrative is developed.

“These small works on paper are my practice, much in the way a Buddist sits in Zazen, a daily meditation. They are a portal through which I enter an unknown world and explore the possibilities that present themselves. They form and inform my larger works and have become essential to my studio life. The immediacy of mark due to scale and medium and the potential to operate on a surface where the stakes are so small allow for huge gains in my visual language.

Tim Craighead is a California based artist who was the recipient of a Rydell Fellowship in 2011. He has exhibited in galleries and museums across the United States and Mexico including Gerald Peters Gallery, NM; Gebert Contemporary, NM; Seager Gray Gallery, CA; Savage Gallery, OR; OTA Gallery, NM; RB Stevenson Gallery, CA; Smith Anderson Editions, CA; San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art, CA; Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery, CA; University of California, Santa Cruz, CA; Montalvo Center for the Arts, CA; Yuma Fine Arts Museum, AZ; Triton Museum of Art, CA; Monterey Museum of Art, CA; Museo de Arte Mazatlan, Mexico and Galaria Ajolote, Mexico.