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Photos Sue Harrison
Edwin Dickinson portrait by Nancy Craig as part of the PAAM Familiar Faces exhibit. |
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Norman Mailer portrait by Nancy Craig. |
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Facing up to the past
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
In order to see eye to eye with the subjects in Nancy Craig’s portraits, you have to do more than stand up straight. You need a ladder.
See several of Craig’s massive portraits, along with work by Charles Hawthorne, Henry Hensche, Philip Malicoat, George Yater and others, at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, 460 Commercial St. The show opens with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday and runs through April 13.
When the diminutive Craig says she likes to paint larger than life, she’s making a big understatement. Anyone who’s ever seen her work can feel the gusto she brings to the canvas. For this show a selection of her portraits dating back to her student days in the 1960s and ranging through work as recent as 2001 was chosen to hang with work by old masters of the Provincetown art colony like Yater and Hawthorne.
The show, “Familiar Faces: Portraits at PAAM,” was curated by Breon Dunigan and Christine McCarthy. Dunigan had access to work by her grandfather, Philip Malicoat, and McCarthy was able draw from the PAAM collection. But it is largely Craig’s work that will create the drama of this exhibit.
Craig talks about how she makes these supersized portraits.
“They are done from real life on a 40-inch round, and from that oil sketch I do these big heads,” she says. Some of the works wind up as a regular size like a portrait of Cape actor Florence Phillips done in two sittings — one for the head and body, one for the hands — or the dreamy portrait of Craig’s late husband Preston Carter in a flowing shirt like a languid romance poet.
But it is the colossal works like those of Hans Hofmann, Norman Mailer and Edwin Dickinson that will take the breath away from across the street.
“This is the only portrait Hofmann ever posed for. That’s what he told me,” she says. “While we were doing it, he got an asthma attack or something and we did the whole thing in 40 minutes.”
The canvas has the look of a study done in haste but with sure strokes.
The Dickinson portrait began as a 32-inch round study done from life that progressed in the studio to a 77-by-86-inch canvas. “I primed the canvas green, and it’s a lovely green, and did the head,” she says.
In that portrait Dickinson, one of the town’s important early modernists, fills the canvas with his whiskered face. His eyes look earnest and measured. Also on display is a portrait of a young Dickinson by Hawthorne, a perfect foil for Craig’s take on the artist as an older man.
Across the gallery, leaning against the wall and waiting to be hung, is a large portrait of a young Norman Mailer. His head is crowned by tight brown curls and his face is framed by an open-necked black shirt.
Also in this show is a Craig self-portrait from 2001 that has been in a show at the Cahoon Museum this winter.
“It’s twice life-sized,” she says and explains that since the pieces are so large she has to adjust the size and shapes so that they look in perspective when seen from below.
The PAAM show may be an introduction to Craig’s portrait work for many locals. She has shown work of a more mythic theme like her Renaissance Dream Series . But in the larger world, Craig is a very well-known portrait artist. She’s traveled the world to capture the likenesses of Anjelica Huston, Tyrone Power, Prince Alexander Romanoff, Princess Marie Luise of Prussia and Frank Lloyd Wright, to name a few.
For now she’s working toward a new, larger studio and coming to terms with the loss of her husband last year. She has sold the 10,000 books that lined every room and hallway in their Truro home. “You had to walk sideways,” she says. “Preston collected books. He used to read to me every night.”
She’s already at work on an exhibit for next summer at Berta Walker Gallery and says that PAAM has also expressed interest in staging a show for her in the future.
You won’t find Craig resting on her laurels — she’s too busy for that.
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
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Outer Cape Gallery Listings
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Feb 28th, 2008