Artist Spotlight: Chris Cran (b. 1949)
By: ArtBank / 04 July 2017Place: Grew up in Salmon Arm, BC; currently resides in Calgary.
About the artist: Chris Cran is a celebrated Canadian painter. His provocative, often comical work plays on cheeky jokes, idioms, tropes and fantasies. During his career he has experimented with photorealism, Op-art, Pop-art, and abstraction. The role of the viewer is a central part of Cran’s artwork. He is fascinated with illusion of space, optical effects, and attention span, which he uses to his advantage when seducing viewers into his work. Cran is also a teacher at his alma mater, the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Chris Cran, Large Purple Still Life (1991), acrylic and oil on canvas
About the artwork:Large Purple Still Life is one of Cran’s striped paintings, which explore the nature of perception. Familiar objects are made larger, are distorted and covered with strips of paint. These works engage yet frustrate viewers, as Cran plays with our inclination to find and make meaning, and prohibits our ability read to the image clearly, as we know it in reality. This painting was featured in the artist’s retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada in 2016.
Rent artwork by Chris Cran from $720 - $1800 per year.
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