Creighton Michael:
SQUIGGLElinear
May 14, 2008—August 17, 2008
Creighton Michael creates interrelated works in painting, drawing, and sculpture. He sets up a dialogue between paintings and sculpture that supports a careful and thorough approach to the creative endeavor, which originates out of the artist’s interest in drawing. Indeed, it must be understood from the beginning that the conceptual underpinnings of all of Michael’s work is the practice of drawing and the movement of line in space, whether that line is painted, drawn, or dimensional. Michael says of his work, “Drawing is primary, not preliminary.” Each of Michael’s sculptures refers to the transitory nature of installation and the concrete character of its materials. In all of the artist’s paintings and sculptures there is a sense of the fleeting and of the momentary that acts as a counterpoint to their implied history and which demonstrates the artist’s sensitivity for concept and aesthetic.
Michael holds graduate degrees from Vanderbilt University (MA) and Washington University in St. Louis (MFA). He has taught and lectured at Princeton University, Hunter College, the Rhode Island School of Design and other institutions of higher learning. Michael has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts the Edward Albee Foundation, a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, and a Golden Foundation for the Arts Award, in addition to other distinctions. Michael’s work can be found in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum, Denver Art Museum, the High Museum of Art, the Mint Museums, the National Gallery of Art, Neuberger Museum of Art and others.
