When Bryn Craig finds himself inspired by a dingy hotel in Los Angeles or a misty landscape in British Columbia, he stops whatever he’s doing to paint it. “I have no preconceptions,” Craig says. “When I see something, I just do it.” He laughs, “My wife is very patient–she’ll go shopping or something and come back later.”
Craig, a regular exhibitor at The Garden Gallery, seemed destined to be an artist-his teacher even predicted it in first grade. “At school I was really encouraged,” he says. “No one but me was allowed to use the chalk.”
Later, Craig illustrated his high school yearbook, and went on to attend the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. Craig attended an art school in New York and taught a couple art classes in Philadelphia, at the same college from which he’d graduated.
Born in Pennsylvania, Craig worked for N.W. Ayer for eight years in their Philadelphia, Chicago and New York offices. He worked for Young and Rubicam in Los Angeles and San Francisco until 1992. During those years he designed advertisements for many businesses, including Goodyear Tires, Hidden Valley Ranch Salad Dressings, and Gallo Wines. Although he worked in advertising for 37 years, he constantly painted and exhibited his work in galleries. Eventually, he took an early retirement to paint full time.
“There are so many compromises in that business,” Craig explains. “The guy paying wants his say. With my painting, no one tells me what to do: I do what I want to do, when and where I want to do it. There’s no discipline about it. I’d hate going to an office.”
This freedom allows Craig to do something else he loves as well: travel. Craig travels every few weeks, to places as local as Malibu and Stinson Beach, and to places as far away as Canada and Greece. He even has a special carrying case with all the equipment he needs to paint.
Craig does most of his paintings in oils. He explains that many people don’t prefer oils because they don’t dry quickly. He learned the hard way not to take oils traveling: once, while he was working outdoors on a piece, it was blown over by the wind and ruined by pine needles. Now, Craig takes watercolors when he travels, and returns home to go over the watercolors in oil in the safety of his home studio.
Many artists prefer acrylics, which emit fewer fumes and dry faster. But Craig actually prefers oils because the slow-drying process allows him to make changes. “I like the tactile feel of oils, the gooiness…I can go back and work on it more before it dries.”
It usually takes Craig three weeks to complete a piece, though it can be longer. “I like to leave it alone and come back to it, so I can see it with a fresh eye. That’s why I usually have several projects going on at once.”
Craig paints every day, often for hours at a time. He’s not easily distracted: he’ll usually have the radio on, or be watching television during the football season. He loves his home studio, which was added onto his house. All white with plenty of ventilation and high ceilings, it is filled with piles of photographs, stacks of canvases and bright paint splatters.
Craig paints for gallery exhibits, private commissions, and his own enjoyment. His work focuses on landscapes and architecture. He calls himself a realist, but not a photorealist: although he occasionally paints from photographs, he feels free to take liberties. “Maybe the grass is out of focus, or the palms aren’t what I want them to be. I use photographs-I don’t copy them. I’ll take a photo of something during the day, and when I paint it I’ll make it night. I decide which window is lit. I invent freely. Once I moved a whole railroad in a painting. It’s kind of playing God.”
Craig points to one example of a painting showing the back of a hotel and parking lot in L.A. “There was no drain there, no car there in the parking lot, no light in that window. When something’s missing in a scene, I just help it out.”
Though he may change things-move a lamppost here, turn a light on there-Craig genuinely wants to capture the feel of a place. The meticulous perspective and clean lines in his work show an incredible attention to detail. There is an almost geometric quality to his work, and a careful concern with angle and lighting.
“I really try to catch the atmosphere of the place,” Craig says. “When someone says, ‘it looks like the place,’ I know I got across what I wanted.” One of Craig’s influences is realist painter Edward Hopper. He said Hopper’s work is like poetry: “He really captures that place, at that time. That’s what I try to do.”
In addition to oil and watercolor, Craig also does some woodworking. “I do my woodworking on the deck,” he adds. “Sawdust doesn’t go well with oils, and not with my wife either.”
Craig has done a couple abstract pieces as well. “I almost never do abstracts,” he says. But he was inspired to do one when he started thinking about streams. “There are a lot of streams in my paintings, so I got very interested in streams for a while, the way they ripple if you throw in a pebble,” he explained. “I started to think about what it would be like if you were the water. So I painted this one imagining that’s what you’d be seeing.” The painting, about as high as his shoulder, showed a dizzying swirl of blues and grays that almost seemed to move on the canvas.
But Craig thinks he’ll be doing more of what he’s known for in the future. “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing,” he says. And his preference is certainly welcome-Craig has sold out shows. Once, a bed-and-breakfast manager in Manchester, who angrily demanded to know what Craig was doing when he found him painting the hotel, ended up buying Craig’s piece-a purchase that paid for the rest of Craig’s weekend stay.
Currently, Craig continues to show his work at several galleries at a time. He lives with his wife in San Rafael, painting in his studio between travels. He says he loves “everything but the fumes.” He says painting is a way to observe, and that’s one of the things he likes about it.
“I’m not good at anything else,” he laughs. “Even if my work was never shown or put up in a gallery, if no one ever saw it or bought anything, I’d still be painting.”
Download an interview with Bryn Craig by Jessica Robles
By Bryn Craig (Oil on Canvas) 24 x 36 Inches
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum pulvinar risus at nisl consectetur, vel dapibus lacus euismod. In vitae orci non urna venenatis posuere. Maecenas et fermentum turpis. Suspendisse in nunc sem. Morbi dapibus sem nec mi accumsan, et tincidunt nisl pellentesque. Suspendisse sed nulla a est cursus consequat. Curabitur elementum orci ut ligula dignissim, in egestas purus vestibulum. Nam ac tempor metus. Fusce id tempus libero. Donec nec ipsum ornare, mattis est at, placerat est. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam elit lorem, egestas quis volutpat a, tincidunt id metus. Maecenas at ante risus. Quisque euismod turpis erat, non sodales tellus venenatis id. Aliquam iaculis nibh justo, ut eleifend eros pulvinar interdum. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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By Bryn Craig (Oil on Canvas) 18 x 36 Inches
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum pulvinar risus at nisl consectetur, vel dapibus lacus euismod. In vitae orci non urna venenatis posuere. Maecenas et fermentum turpis. Suspendisse in nunc sem. Morbi dapibus sem nec mi accumsan, et tincidunt nisl pellentesque. Suspendisse sed nulla a est cursus consequat. Curabitur elementum orci ut ligula dignissim, in egestas purus vestibulum. Nam ac tempor metus. Fusce id tempus libero. Donec nec ipsum ornare, mattis est at, placerat est. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam elit lorem, egestas quis volutpat a, tincidunt id metus. Maecenas at ante risus. Quisque euismod turpis erat, non sodales tellus venenatis id. Aliquam iaculis nibh justo, ut eleifend eros pulvinar interdum. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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By Bryn Craig (Oil on Canvas) 24 x 36 Inches
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum pulvinar risus at nisl consectetur, vel dapibus lacus euismod. In vitae orci non urna venenatis posuere. Maecenas et fermentum turpis. Suspendisse in nunc sem. Morbi dapibus sem nec mi accumsan, et tincidunt nisl pellentesque. Suspendisse sed nulla a est cursus consequat. Curabitur elementum orci ut ligula dignissim, in egestas purus vestibulum. Nam ac tempor metus. Fusce id tempus libero. Donec nec ipsum ornare, mattis est at, placerat est. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam elit lorem, egestas quis volutpat a, tincidunt id metus. Maecenas at ante risus. Quisque euismod turpis erat, non sodales tellus venenatis id. Aliquam iaculis nibh justo, ut eleifend eros pulvinar interdum. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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By Bryn Craig (Oil on Canvas) 11 x 15 Inches
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum pulvinar risus at nisl consectetur, vel dapibus lacus euismod. In vitae orci non urna venenatis posuere. Maecenas et fermentum turpis. Suspendisse in nunc sem. Morbi dapibus sem nec mi accumsan, et tincidunt nisl pellentesque. Suspendisse sed nulla a est cursus consequat. Curabitur elementum orci ut ligula dignissim, in egestas purus vestibulum. Nam ac tempor metus. Fusce id tempus libero. Donec nec ipsum ornare, mattis est at, placerat est. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam elit lorem, egestas quis volutpat a, tincidunt id metus. Maecenas at ante risus. Quisque euismod turpis erat, non sodales tellus venenatis id. Aliquam iaculis nibh justo, ut eleifend eros pulvinar interdum. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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By Bryn Craig (Oil on Canvas) 9 x 12 Inches
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum pulvinar risus at nisl consectetur, vel dapibus lacus euismod. In vitae orci non urna venenatis posuere. Maecenas et fermentum turpis. Suspendisse in nunc sem. Morbi dapibus sem nec mi accumsan, et tincidunt nisl pellentesque. Suspendisse sed nulla a est cursus consequat. Curabitur elementum orci ut ligula dignissim, in egestas purus vestibulum. Nam ac tempor metus. Fusce id tempus libero. Donec nec ipsum ornare, mattis est at, placerat est. Orci varius natoque penatibus et magnis dis parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus. Nam elit lorem, egestas quis volutpat a, tincidunt id metus. Maecenas at ante risus. Quisque euismod turpis erat, non sodales tellus venenatis id. Aliquam iaculis nibh justo, ut eleifend eros pulvinar interdum. In hac habitasse platea dictumst.
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