LOUISE CRANDELL
Artist Statement

"Infrared"

Hovering between the real and the unreal, Louise Crandell’s moody canvases contemplate life and death and probe our fascination with the unknown.

For the Infrared series, Crandell’s second solo at Boltax Gallery, she has created a series of paintings in oil and wax on canvas and linen that mix remembrances of Fra Angelico’s 15th century religious murals with the eerie infared color produced by military night goggles.

“I wanted to explore those particular emotional images and ideas,” Crandell explains, “those that are terrifying yet also revered.”

Staring into the paintings, we peer into the dark, both literally and conceptually. Floating objects representing figures, tombs, and portals are some of the loaded symbols Crandell uses.

The work’s stylistic approach evolved out of Crandell’s investigations into minimalism, abstract expressionism, and color field theories. Adding to her spare pallet, she used the texture of paint and the emotion of her strokes to carve dark voids and shape transforming light into meditative landscapes.

Somber and quiet, the paintings nevertheless resonate with the real drama of human history. War and religion naturally come to mind when we study Crandell’s soft-focus paintings, but so do images of great beauty. Death is implied, but so is the idea of transformation.

In trying to visualize limbo, Crandell gives us art that ponders the abstract lure of mortality’s edge.

This show is dedicated to the memory of my father, Keith Hawley Crandell.

—Louise Crandell