ArtQuench Gallery Announces Laurin McCracken
The Winner of the Sept. “My Art ” Competition
with his winning image titled “Ice Water”
Laurin has won one year of representation with AQG.
To view Laurin’s profile page click the link below..
http://www.artquenchgallery.com/artistDetail.php?id=94174&name=LAURIN++MCCRACKEN
Juror; Monica Hicks
I can admit to having a particular fascination with Photorealism and the enigma of reality juxtaposed with the reveal of the fiction. There is level of detail in a typical Photorealistic work that will ensure that digital images will look fairly crisp, even at lower resolutions.
We are accustomed to the glowing photographs of the internet, the glossy pages in magazines, and the bombardment of highly calculated yet so-natural-looking images on television—Photorealism may simply seem like an old friend with the added wonder that someone did every bit of the work by hand.
Laurin grasps this, clearly, and speaks to me not just with the medium and method of her artwork, but with the content; depicting a traditional glass pitcher of water, a sweating vessel in its wait for use. Aren’t we all?
Photorealism simultaneously combines a heightened air of reality with the twist of being a convincing facsimile of a copy, as if to assure us that in some way or another, no reality can escape the lens of the camera, or the eye.
Laurin McCracken is an architect who has put the skills learned over the years in drawing, photographing and observing to use as a watercolorist. He studied with Gwen Bragg at the Art League School in Alexandria, Virginia and with Alain Gavin at the Art Institute in Chicago. He has paintings in corporate and private collections, including McGraw-Hill’s Corporate Collection and the Urban Land Institute. He also has photographs in the Graphics Arts Collection, Princeton University.
Born in Meridian, Mississippi, he attended Auburn University and holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Architecture from Rice University and a Masters in Architecture and Urban Planning from Princeton University. He has a home and studio in Leland, Mississippi.
McCracken is an award-winning artist whose paintings have been exhibited in juried shows coast to coast including the Philadelphia Watercolor Society, Niagara Frontier Watercolor Society, Pittsburgh Watercolor Society and the Adirondacks National Exhibition of American Watercolors, California Watercolor Society, Watercolor West, Southern Watercolor Society and the American Watercolor Society.
His work has been included in the Beijing Biennale in 2010 and 2012, the Shanghai International Watercolor Biennial Exhibition in 2010 and 2012 and the Shenzhen International Watercolour Biennial 2013.
He is a signature member of more than a dozen watercolor societies including the American Watercolor Society, National Watercolor Society, Watercolor West and Transparent Watercolor Society of America, Southern Watercolor Society.
His work is represented by the Southside Gallery, Oxford, MS, Greenberg Fine Art, Santa Fe, NM, and the Cassidy Bayou Gallery, Sumner, MS
Artist Statement
“I interpret the real world through the medium of watercolor. While I see things as a photographer, thus as a painter I am able to use the medium as a tool to express how I see things. One of my goals is to help people see everyday things in a new light.
My still life paintings are influenced by the Dutch and Flemish still life painters of the 16th and 17th Century, such as Pieter Claesz, Willem Kalf and Jan Davidz de Heem.”
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