(The Historic Arkansas Museum)
200 East Third, Little Rock, Arkansas 72201


WARREN CRISWELL: CONCEPTIONS & PERCEPTIONS

 The Bio
I've always thought an artist's bio is distracting, misleading and usually boring. The important thing is the work. If the work fails, the bio can't save it-even one (unlike my own) full of credentials. Think of the work of Homer (the Greek, not Winslow), or Vermeer. Where are the bios?

..........My friend the late Canadian artist and writer Robert Genn told about experiencing a "perfect moment" during a painting trip to Ireland. He had had this experience before, he says, and there's always something hauntingly familiar about it--something about the correctness of the design or the colors, the light is just right or whatever. He called it an "alpine" moment and thought an artist has maybe ten of them in a lifetime.
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I think he was right about the Ten Moments, give or take a few. With me, it might be something seen in the world--an experience like Robert's in the alpine meadow, although mine are seldom that picturesque--or a scene in a movie, or something read in a book, seen only in my mind. It has to be an image, though, not just an idea. Usually, my efforts to make an image out of an idea don't work out. The image must come first, usually unexpectedly. Making sense out of it may or may not follow. The important thing for me is to get it down as a sketch immediately. It may seem so dramatic and vivid that it will be there in my head forever as a permanent resource. Wrong. If I don't make it into something tangible on the spot or very soon afterward the image is lost..Some of the sketches in this show are attempts to do this. Photos don't work for me at this stage. The photo is never what I saw--it never records that Moment. .

But if we artists could make sense out of our Moments--if we could track them to their source--I don't think we would find them in the visible biographical facts of our lives. I think we would find them, if at all, in the shadows, linked in some way to important but hidden emotional episodes in our lives. They might be archetypal or they might be purely personal, but the unconscious need to express them--make them visible, give birth to them, exorcise them--is probably what fuels our creativity. All of my images could probably be grouped around these Moments. Ten are enough. More would be unbearable.

..........My point is, the Ten Moments do not appear in the artist's bio! As Balthus said, "Now let us look at the pictures."
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Warren Criswell
.........................................................June 2001

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Fog, 2000, acrylic & oil on wood, 7 x 5 inches



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All images and text Copyright © 2001-2016 by Warren Criswell