November 29, 2023
Ann Craven, Moon (Yellow Moon, Crazy 8’s), 2023, 2023, oil on canvas, 84 × 72 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Karma.
New moon, crescent, full moon, and again crescent. . . . The lunar journey from a slim bend toward completeness and back to waning brims with mysteries, many of which will never be solved by our terrestrial eyes. The moon gazes down at Ann Craven, oftentimes veiled by New England’s nocturnal laciness or occasionally remaining still amid Manhattan’s glorious dimness. Craven has been painting various forms of the moon throughout her three-decade career, starting with her first gallery show in 1995. Craven’s sources include postcards, family photos, her own watercolors, and the vistas outside her studios in Tribeca and Cushing, Maine.
Craven’s solo exhibition, Twelve Moons, at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) Museum of Art earlier this year was the largest show dedicated to her lunar venture, featuring eighty-eight paintings of Earth’s nighttime companion. In her new show, Night, at Karma in New York City, the moon stands omnipresent, washing nature with Craven’s night-loving, loose brushstrokes: birds perch on precarious branches; deer roam loose; dead flowers bulge their seeds. Like an enigmatic poem or a familiar scent, the moon appears hypnotically luring and effortlessly comfortable. Not unlike revisiting a confessional diary entry, each painting assumes its moment’s heartbreaking irreversibility while thriving at the promise in tomorrow.
—Osman Can Yerebakan
Osman Can Yerebakan
Repetition and obsession oftentimes go hand in hand, and so do meditation and repetition. What type of repetitive meditation do you find in obsession? Does repeating certain subjects convey comfort?
Ann Craven
I am thinking about obsession with loss but also gaining through revisitation. I can actually deal with loss really well. The idea of revisiting for me is so spiritual, and it has nothing to do with the market, originality, or questioning ideas on comparisons. It really ventures to the idea that I need to revisit and remember things that I wouldn’t necessarily remember. This is almost like praying; saying the same prayer again and again is so cathartic.
I was brought up Catholic but with a priest who actually had a girlfriend; he was my uncle and was great. I had a feminist grandmother who believed in spirit but didn’t believe in the bullshit of Catholic stuff. The idea of whatever is afterward remains in my heart. I can hold onto something for so long by revisiting it and imagining. I’ve had a lot of death in my family and personal loss, so it’s really comfortable to revisit things, which is almost like breaking the rules. It’s so naughty, and at the same time I really have to do it.
OCY
Nature is the main subject you find comforting to repeat.
AC
I can covet something and hold it close but not worry it’s going to go away. There is love in a repeated brushstroke—like revisiting a poem or a book. I like to think I can destroy the paintings if they don’t work out, but then I just get all entangled in them emotionally and in their mistakes, and I like the bad parts. There is memory in this, similar to revisiting a book. One of my favorite books is Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. When my mother died suddenly in 2005, I couldn’t function; but that book really gave me comfort. In it, you have twenty-four hours to bury your dead pet, and it comes back to life. Whatever different pet you get back, you don’t have any choice to choose or change, but you do get something back. Every inch of that book is absolutely genius.
OCY
Speaking of loss, let’s talk about the fire that happened at your studio in 1999 and caused you to lose many belongings, including your work and things with sentimental value. There is a story of Phoenix-like rebirth and return to life here.
AC
Realizing that everything was gone was extraordinarily difficult. I remember going to the dry cleaner and asking them, as I usually forget to collect my laundry, if I picked up my stuff. I really thought I had a bunch of stuff left there, and the cleaner said, “No, you picked your stuff up a couple of weeks ago.”
There was so much loss at the time. 9/11 happened a little over a year later. In the time between the fire and the new-to-come losses, it was pretty hard, and I didn’t know how to even begin to put the pieces back together. My grandfather always said, “Just keep it going; keep it going.” He was a roofer from Boston, so he was also repeating: putting roofing shingles on top of other shingles, always the same material. He taught me the notion of just not giving up.
OCY
Besides the sentimental aspect of witnessing work burn, one probably also feels a sense of loss of labor. How did you decide to resurrect lost works in a new form?
AC
The process is secretive and not conscious because otherwise it would be strategic. It is from a part of your body that you don’t even admit to yourself. Eventually, you can’t bring anything back—it’s impossible. You can believe that things can come back in different forms. A group of deer and daisies paintings was in a gallery show when the fire happened. The series was called Dears and Daisies (The Life of the Fawn) (1998), inspired by Gustave Courbet’s painting The Death of the Stag (1867). I had painted the childhood memories from postcards, en plein air. I could never get rid of these incredible postcards or magazine images of animals; they just resonated in me. I ended up getting all the paintings back from that show after the fire. I looked at them and couldn’t believe these were not part of the fire. I started copying the ones that were in my presence as a way to make sure that I always had them if I needed them for reference in the same way that you save things on an external hard drive. I was in a survival mode at that point, and I started to revisit the uncomfortable comfort of painting things that you love as a kid.
OCY
Remembering what your grandfather said about not giving up, there is a continuum in your undertaking in that you decide to never stop, and you continue painting elements of nature along with the process of nature itself. Things keep rejuvenating on a cycle.
AC
The cyclical continuum of being obsessed with nature drives my life. For example, seeing a cardinal in the middle of the winter: You know it’s not the same bird that you saw before, but it’s repeated again and again in nature. Nature always wins somehow, or I like to think nature wins. There is a season for everything. The moon has been the most important thing for me to grab and make it my content because it comes back seemingly the same but always different.
OCY
Speaking of the moon, is there a reason for painting eighty-eight moons in the SCAD show? The moon is interesting for, as you said, always being there and having different faces and phases. Your depiction of the moon holds a diaristic aspect.
AC
Eighty-eight didn’t have any reason except in the end that was the number of paintings in the show. Every space between every painting had to be the same because I wanted it to be like time clicking. Last year, I tried to make sense of this moon that I use for subject matter and see what it will look like in a show, so I painted every single month in the year 2022. The only idea I had was that I was going to paint when and where I can, and those markers would represent that month.
OCY
Your gestures vary between arm and wrist movements. How do you balance these two based on scale?
AC
I have brushes that I use for painting the small paintings and others for large works. Your arm movement has to be the same. It is about the gesture that my content lies in: the next brushstroke, the next brushstroke, and the next brushstroke. I am thinking about time and about warping sensibility by taking something small and making it bigger. In the end, the paintings are not really about birds or the moon; they’re about process.
OCY
You are a true New Englander, I think. There is a long trajectory of artists finding inspiration in the region’s sky, sunlight, and nature; there is also the quaintness of the towns with colorful houses and narrow streets leading to the sea. Could you tell us about your experience of New England?
AC
The sky really depicts seasons in New England. The sky in Cushing could be green because of the light from the Aurora Borealis. I’ve never gotten away from being a New England person; it is always influencing me. I don’t talk about it much in the work, but it definitely has its roots in a New England staunch belief in something, almost to the point of being too much! Also, New Englanders are notably hoarders in some ways. Maybe I’m hoarding too.
