Anthony B. Creeden
I am fascinated with the materials and techniques familiar in
a painter’s language, reconfiguring and generating them into
something new.
In some of my paintings, wildly colorful surfaces built up with
egg tempera are cropped by the intervention of tinted glass,
propped on handmade aluminum brackets. The tilted pane
distorts the abstract composition behind it and emphasizes the
playful, figurative relationships between the painting, glass,
and hardware. Similar figurative elements appear in the Casca-
Grossa series, where I lay down marks in primary pigments,
quickly constructing the basic planes of a portrait. Translucent
egg tempera on rough, unprimed linen speaks to my interest in
traditional painting materials.
Coming from a long line of carpenters, machinists, and other
hands-on laborers, I have, over time, absorbed not only skills in
craft and manual work but also a vocabulary around masculinity
and issues of class. This background encourages me to question
image and form in non-traditional ways, and to imbue the making
process with a personally meaningful narrative.