Michael Craik: EBB & FLOW

Michael Craik’s practice explores the interplay of colour and repetition as a method of producing quiet, contemplative work concerned with colour, material quality and process. Craik creates paintings by repeatedly applying paint and removing it again. This process of reduction features throughout his work, alluding to forces of erosion that form our landscape. He allows the elemental qualities of the paint to determine the appearance of each work, creating contemplative, minimal paintings. The focus of these works often lies at the edges, where sanding reveals strata of paint, exposing layers of alternating colour that have been built up by brushing, pouring or spreading. In this sense, his work shares a relationship with geology, to the laying down and erosion of rock. Living in Scotland, one is constantly reminded of the forces that sculpt the land. Craik’s studio in Kinghorn, Fife, stands on a cliff overlooking the River Forth estuary. Surrounded by this expanse of water and the endless ebb and flow of the tide, Craik is aware that these processes have, over time, permeated his artistic practice.

Michael Craik was born in Edinburgh in 1972 and has worked as an artist in Scotland for the last 22 years. He studied Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen before completing an MA in European Fine Art in Barcelona.