Maysey Craddock

This is the final week to see my show ‘to the heart of the woods’ @searspeytongallery ✨✨✨

The ten paintings in ‘to the heart of the woods’ are like an invitation, a signpost, a love letter. As references to place, they are themselves records of the unfurling life cycles of a tree, a copse, a shore. The wind, the water, the weather and time are forever shaping the edges of things, but this unfurling ribbon of natural change is pulled at the edges, pressured by the forces and appetites of human consumption. Out in the world, wild expanses divide and fragment, and in the studio I paint to remember these spaces and find a way to calm the overwhelm that comes with every news cycle. Drawn from my own photographs, I reimagine fragments of wild habitat that persist—despite human impact—within ongoing cycles of death, rebirth, and reclamation. These are spaces of tension and harmony, where the built surface and the evolving image converge. They are windows that open up to a slower register of time—one attuned to seasonal shifts, geological rhythms, and the quiet persistence of the natural world. Through line, color and beauty, a way to breathe.

Shown here: “Cloud becomes Sea”; 2026; 47.75 x 36 inches; #gouache, #flashe and thread on #paperbags