Meg Cranston

“Everything divine runs with light feet “

                                           ~Nietzsche

Meliksetian | Briggs is pleased to present Size, Shape, Distraction, an exhibition of new paintings by Meg Cranston. The fourth solo show of the artist’s work in the gallery, the exhibition continues Cranston’s ongoing interest in themes of personal identity, the subjective and their relationship to the broader culture by way of color theory, design, shared cultural references and formal experimentation. Cranston’s paintings are characterized by their playfulness and wit, an entrance into her explorations of the nature of image making and the role the artist plays in our society.

I’ve always been interested in the basic elements of painting, artworks, and things generally.

I did an exhibition called Hue Saturation Value about the three components of color. I used a simple color program (three primaries), but the potential iterations of hue, saturation, and value were endless. I could have made a thousand plus paintings with that idea.

I love generative plans. Limitless ideas.

I titled the show Size Shape Distraction.

Late last year, I started two small paintings that I thought were the same size but realized were slightly different. The slight difference created a destabilizing effect when shown next to each other. Not so much to be annoying, rather enough to be lively or open-ended.

If every painting is the same size in an exhibition, the effect is order, like soldiers in an army. But, on the other hand, if there are many sizes, each work becomes isolated, its own thing.

I wondered what was between those two. Paintings that were somewhat similar in size and shape but not easily put in the same box. So, I chose two dimensions, 60 x 45 and 60 x 50.

I have used the size 60 x 45 for many years, so I know how it behaves. 60 x 50 is a new size for me, so I don’t know how it will behave in an exhibition, especially next to 60 x 45.

Given those parameters, size, and shape, I had felt I had maximum freedom in terms of the color and object matter of the paintings. I wondered how much variety I could put into the color and object matter and still hold the basic concept: every painting has a size and shape and something on the surface that makes one conscious of the size and shape or makes you forget it.

I call that thing on the surface the distraction, not in the negative sense, though. A painting is a kind of interruption in ordinary life, and the variety of its possible distractions or interruptions is endless.

~ Meg Cranston, 2022