Gresham M’Cready Sykes

August 20 - September 27, 2002

Artist's Statement

The representational art that I am most interested in is not realism but the kind of work that might strike some viewers as crude or distorted. I prefer primitive art, folk art, political caricatures, cartoons, "art brut," expressionism, and the art of the fauves.

What I like about this art is its freedom and spontaneity, its expressive drawing and emotional use of color, and its focus on the human drama.

These elements are particularly marked, I think, in the work of artists such as Daumier, Beckman, Chagall, Kokoschka, Grosz, Kirchner, Dix, Dubuffet, Matisse, Picasso, Rouault, Soutine, van Dongen, Guston, and Shahn.

In my own work, I find American popular culture - ranging from cigar-store Indians to Krazy Kat - a rich vein of artistic imagery. This material provides a sort of visual slang, a body of informal, demotic icons with a raw vitality that embraces the contemporary world rather than rejects it.

Gresham M'Cready Sykes