Breathing space
Alba Alarcos Veiga: With this exhibition we will have the chance to relish, once again, both your artworks and Michael Craik’s ones. It is not the first time you both take part of a two-person exhibition together. Indeed, you have already displayed your works hand-in-hand up to three occasions, and it has already been almost four years since your last display The Relative Medium at Galleri Konstepidemin in Sweden. How does it feel to reunite once more for Victor’s exhibition proposal?
Eric Cruikshank: It feels good - as our art shares many sensibilities both in the making and the finished work - I enjoy sharing gallery walls with Michael. Also, our work has shifted in the 4 years since the Swedish exhibition, so I am interested to see how the dialogue between our paintings has shifted.
AAV: Your working relationship with Michael Craik has been very fruitful so far. In fact, your first exhibition together in 2013 was already worthy of the Hope Scott Trust award. How did your working relationship start? When did you run into each other for the first time?
EC: We both lived in Edinburgh for a long period of time – as it is a relatively small city with small artistic circles – it is easy to get to know your fellow artists. The larger base of Scottish practitioners would be classed as figurative/narrative artists, as I wouldn’t include myself in these circles, when you meet another artist who is in your specific circle it becomes easy to start a conversation - it’s reassuring - allows an empathy for what you do and what you want to do. From 2011 we both worked from the same studio building, so the working relationship was quite organic in its origin, where it became an easy step for us to approach galleries together. Sharing the achievements of the pairing is a nice element in what is usually such a solitary pursuit.
AAV: You have previously stated that the shifting of the seasons, the change of weather and the light of the Highlands have greatly influenced your work as landscape is usually the initial starting point of your artworks. Given that you have undertaken several artist residencies, such as Mustarinda Residency in Finland or the Santa Fe Art Institute Residency -both of them located in completely different geographies with very distinctive features-, I wonder if your stay there manifested in your works in any way. Are the Highlands still an inspiration even when you work far from home?
EC: My family home in the Highlands remains very important to me both in a personal and professional sense, so I don’t think it will ever be too far from my art. It has a specific atmosphere and energy that filters through to my palette and plane regardless of where I am based. When I have had the opportunity to work in a different country there has been a definite sense of traces of the new environment present in what I produce, but to be honest, the change in my working environment has been the factor that I have come away with; working outside the controlled familiarity of my studio, where the parameters change but the discipline remains, allowing a focus to rest on other areas of my process like materials or support and the possibility of experimentation, which continues when I return home.
AAV: There is something about your art that I find specially fascinating: your artworks seem to be a microcosm themselves. The more we observe, the more we discover about them. Changes in lighting, arrangement or distance can influence the viewers’ perception of the pieces. Accordingly, every single person on the audience seems to be invited to take part of this new scenery that emerges in line with the artwork. Is there a will to interact with the audience based on their specific gaze? If so, do you have this will in mind during all the working process?
EC: The works are an invitation, but not with a specific sense of direction, as I would rather the invitation to be a simple one of just stopping and looking; of slowing down and allowing the possibility of what the viewer wants to see or allowing the work to go in a direction that the viewer sets. On one hand the picture plane avoids representation, but on the other they can always be defined as a real thing in a real space - I do not see myself as inventing space - as my ideas come from constantly investigating the land and the sky. In this way I see them as a bridge between something representational and something abstract. This is not necessarily in my mind during the working process, instead my primary concern is to establish a colour relationship, the foundation in the subtle visual pulse that forms whilst working the surface. But I want the viewer to establish their own rhythm with that pulse, like a door being opened, but they decide what can be on the other side.
AAV: During your working process you try your best not to leave any trace on the smooth surface of the piece, beholders cannot notice at a glance your hand. I believe this is related to your wish of freeing the artwork from any possible narrative reference, thus, enabling the audience to relate personally to the artwork. When did you start paying special attention to concealing any vestige of yourself?
EC: I want the viewers relationship to be firmly squared in the work itself, I can find myself in there, but I want the viewer to find something else. I see this as a means to deepen their interaction with the work and ultimately deepen their relationship with the work, and as you say, it does then have the potential to become personal for them. This has been a long process, and I am not conscious of a specific time of starting this removal, as it has been linked to a gradual refinement of the painting process. But it is one path with the work that I always want to take further - tied in the sense of not assigning titles to the work - I just know that I want the work to have the scope to wholly be someone elses experience without any distraction.
AAV: Despite no tangible traces of your hand can be found in your works, would you consider there are some conceptual traces on it? Do the choice of colour, media or size convey any particular meaning to you?
EC: Not really - the constructs of the work are a means of testing myself and the processes involved in the creation of the work – this test is ongoing as each piece is a means for me to try and answer creative questions, but in finding answers, so many more questions arise. Work comes from work. I would worry if I didn’t have more questions than answers.
AAV: In this upcoming exhibition you will be showing several works, all of them painted in oil. However, you used different supports such as canvas, paper or linen over board. What drives you to choose a particular medium for your works? Is there a connection between the medium and your choice of colour?
EC: All the different mediums I use have specific inherent strengths and weaknesses – sometimes some of the series I produce have their starting point where I try and manipulate these elements – a means of pushing and challenging myself relating to the question and answer that I touched on previously whilst trying to establish a level of control. This control leads me to experiment with different hues and sometimes I can only make them work on specific supports – especially in terms of paper - as each brand and weight has unique properties and absorbency rates. With my drawings there is a lot of physical pressure applied to the support in the application and subtraction process, some papers cannot stand this and disintegrate, so there is a definite connection with medium, but the choice usually comes down to a practical one.
AAV: You once stated that you “want your works to be viewed as attuned to the simple beauty of nature and not defined by the complex process involved”. Due to the recent across-the-board pandemic episodes that overwhelmed the world, many people have experienced long periods of quarantine, thus, experiencing a never-undergoned- introspection, quietness and seclusion from nature. Do you think these recent events may have had an impact on the way the audience approaches your work?
EC: For myself there will be a large sense of uncertainty - not having been to a gallery for so long - I am unsure how it will feel going back to those visual interactions? Also sharing the gallery space with others? There has always been a dual aspect with my work, where it can be anything or nothing, so there has always been the prospect of a quietness and introspection for the viewer if they give the time to stop and look, and I don’t see this changing in terms of the viewing experience. I feel it is important to see beauty in simplicity - not just in art - so I would like to think that as restrictions lift there will be the prospect of a newfound appreciation for what is around us. What we see and how we see it. The seclusion hasn’t been easy especially when there is the awareness of how difficult it has been for so many and will continue to be long after we find a way to move forward from the current lock down. Breaking it down does this make looking at rectangles of colour harder or less important? But for me things would be harder and my interaction with my environment would be less important without having the opportunity to create and exhibit those rectangles.
Alba Alarcos Veiga is an Exhibition Assistant at Victor Lope Arte Contemporaneo.
Interview for the joint exhibition Eric Cruikshank & Michael Craik – Breathing Space (Victor Lope Arte Contemporaneo, Barcelona, 2021).