Building from the Ground Up, Spreading a Little Color
Tina Kesting
Cynthia Bradfield Crier, the Southwest-born artist, has lived in New York for decades and worked as a professional architect for most of her life. But two years ago she realized that she was no longer inspired by her profession. "I was losing a part of me," Crier explains. As she explains is, to work as an architect hardly means being creative or artistic. Rather, architects have to manage and organize and facilitate plans. That is why she decided to quit her job and to live only for her art.
Crier’s palette ranges from oil paintings and watercolors to landscape photography of New York and the Southwest. Her works are strongly influenced by Modernist artists, a fact one can hardly overlook. She uses strong colors to bring the beauty and richness of nature and the details of buildings–her primary muses–to canvas. She sees herself as a "Colorist" and wants to "convey and inspire people" with her paintings. "I do things that inspire me. There is no big message behind my paintings, they are just for enjoyment."
Cristo and Jean-Claude’s latest installation, the Gates, which were installed in New York’s Central Park in February 2005 and were open to public for 16 days, has had a great impact on Crier. To her, the Gates were pure joy. The color of the installation was perfectly chosen, juxtaposing the monotonous winter grey with bright orange. The fluttering and shining cloths had an amazing effect on people’s moods. But, like Crier’s pieces, there was no big message hidden within the installation. The art work was meant only to elicit joy.
This implication is captured by Crier’s oil painting of Cristo’s and Jean-Claude’s installation, Central Park, the Gates I, a blooming winter scene. Bright yellow grass, blue leafless trees and orange fields evoke a dynamic and inspiring mood. One can still recognize grey winter clouds hanging between the branches but they are distanced by the spirit of the contrasting expressive colors.
To Crier, such plays of tone and shadow–as with a dramatically changing desert sky or the ornametal details of a New York brownstone brightened by the sun–are examples of elementary beauty. She explains: "You can even make the most boring things dramatic because of its colors and forms." By showing the most primitivist scenes, you can get the essence of what is there and what is important.
Due to the ever-speeding process of globalization, everybody is becoming closer, exchanging information globally, and people are focusing more and more on widespread and superficial concerns and forget their basic human needs and the beauty that exists all around them. "The world today is over-stimulated with visual information. I seek to simplify." Crier wants to pull observers into the richness of the simpliest things and to inspire them to enjoy them. "I want to express the joy I find in mundane scenes. In nature, and in the city, a lot of beauty exists," she says. Her work Rex Reed Rose Garden which shows a backyard deck within a Southwestern landscape, invites the observer to enjoy the simplicity of the scene. The Impressionist- inspired painting presents architectural forms contrasted with natural elements, pink walls and purple furniture in the foreground, red and orange bloomings and green trees in the back.
The connection between her previous job as an architect and her current pursuits as an artist is the underlying principles of the two professions. Every construction is built upon equal rules of proportion, color, space, light and perspective. "Before you can break the rules, you need to understand them," the artist points out. Her architectural experience also underlines her interest in precision. "I like precision. I need to have it mechanically, perfectly drawn." This intention can be seen in her work, Meat Packing District. The oil painting, standing in the tradition of Charles Sheeler’s industrial scenes, presents a view of New York roofs covered with snow. In contrast to Sheeler, Crier compiles a work of extremely colorful house facades, which reflect an intense light resulting in harsh contrasts to the smooth shapes of snow. Precise geometric forms–rectangulars, cubes, squares–thin and thick lines, diagonal crossing fields and stripes, lead the viewer through the painting. With such intensity, the scene is extremely dynamic. Yellow, blue, red, beige, brown and green fields pull the viewer out of the depressing winter dreams and evoke a variety of feelings, perhaps even the pleasent anticipation of a coming season.
"I didn’t think I would get into painting buildings after having built them for years, but I did and I love it." And people who are getting sick of winter’s darkness and of depressing times need to look at her joyful and playful paintings and gain joy back in their lives.
