Two local artists who look to the past for inspiration are showing their paintings at the Durham Arts Council as the city of Durham continues to support emerging artists and the arts in the Triangle area.
The Durham Arts Council has a special focus on up-and-coming artists, said Lindsay Gordon, the council’s artist services manager. Keeping that in mind, the council presents two retrospective Southern artists in its latest exhibits. Local artists Stacy Crabill, a 2012-13 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant recipient, and William Beatty have had the special opportunity to show their pieces July 19 through Sept. 8 in the Semans Gallery and the Allenton Gallery, respectively.
Although not intentionally collaborative, Crabill’s “Big Sugar” and Beatty’s “ROADSCAPES & BLUESCAPES” complement each other well and both use a lot of color, Beatty said.
“We both have loud pieces that evoke memory,” he said, describing the fact that each artist’s reflection on a different time period is highlighted in his or her art.
Crabill draws on her childhood to paint the large-scale candy featured in her exhibit, which includes 10 paintings. “I’ve always been drawn to candy, and the colors and textures as well as the taste too, but the packaging is beautifully designed and so clever,” Crabill said.
Crabill was able to work on these large-scale pieces after the Durham Arts Council awarded her a grant last year. With that support, she has been able to super-size the candy and really get the detail right, she said.
The Durham Arts Council has special support for emerging and upcoming artists, which both Crabill and Beatty said they are grateful for. The project was made possible by an Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist Grant from the Durham Arts Council with support from the N.C. Arts Council, a division of the Department of Cultural Resources. The artists both said the council devotes a lot of care to the artists it gives grants to, tracking their progress and supporting them through the process of making art. “Durham Arts Council is a conduit between artists of different types and the public,” Beatty said.
Whereas Crabill drew on childhood images of candy for her exhibit, Beatty focuses on an infusion of landscape and blues in his art, drawing on the images and music of Memphis, Tenn. — a place he called home for 18 years. Beatty paints representational landscape art, which was inspired by driving through the Center of Blues. He said he painted the landscape as if it were moving instead of a fixed point of reference. “This is where a lot of our music comes from. My paintings are the experience of traveling through the Delta.”
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