October First Friday at ShowUp

Join us for October First Friday!

On view: Craig Cromartie's solo exhibition Far, Dark Places, curated by Marla L. McLeod

About the Exhibition

During his time in the prison system, Craig Cromartie found creative ways to occupy his mind. While locked away, Cromartie was able to explore imagined and remembered places, as he sought to transcend the monotony and casual cruelty of America's penal system.

Restricted to supplies available to those incarcerated, Cromartie devised entire worlds of psychedelic surrealism or fantasy melting into abstraction with colored pencils, q-tips, and watercolors, all on painstakingly taped standard sheets of paper.

Making art that symbolically illustrates different periods in his life and their attendant struggles, his images often feature contradictions and opposing forces. Themes of mental health, journeys and decision-making, as well as the battle of good and evil, and the healing power of music, art, and nature, appear repeatedly.

Through it all, the viewer and the tableaux are often under surveillance, through a pervasive all-seeing eye, seemingly observing both artist and viewer.