Craww. Ebb and Flow

Nero Gallery is pleased to present "Ebb and Flow", the first personal exhibition in Italy by the english artist Craww.

"Ebb and Flow" is a collection of paintings and drawings that focuses on the fascination with the ambiguities of nature and humanity. The artist investigates and recreates the woman's view, representing her as a fairy creature, a Muse, sublimating and elevating her to a non-human dimension, but close to the divine.

Craww's women are in constant transformation. Metamorphosis is captured during its development, at the maximum moment of tension between darkness and light, dynamism and staticity, as these Muses strive to find a balance in the ebb and flow of life.

Each painting has a feminine creature in itself, but different are the visions and contexts in which she is represented. Sometimes she blends and interacts with animal creatures and other times with floral creatures.

The series entitled "Murder" represents the combination between the woman and the raven, which, if commonly has a negative meaning of death and corruption, in alchemy means death and resurrection. The raven symbolizes the alchemical phase called Nigredo, the first step in the path of creating philosophical stone, in which all the alchemical ingredients have to "die" and then reborn in a new synthesis.

Animals are present in almost all of his works and all references to them come from mythology. The rabbit, for example, is a symbol of beauty, burning sexuality and, for its renowned prolificity, becomes an undisputed emblem of fertility. In classic mythology Cupids are often represented with rabbits.

The rabbit is also a lunar symbol: it sleeps in daytime hours and lives during the night, illuminated by the brilliant reflected light of our natural satellite. It connects closely to the Moon, and through it, to Mother Earth and fertile water, in the name of rebirth in an endless circle.

The heron instead is a symbol of shyness, because of its detached and dodgy nature, is a symbol of timidity, silence, meditation and divine wisdom. For this reason it is associated by Christian mythology to Christ. The heron first senses the storm, seeks shelter and calls for prudence. For the Egyptians this animal acts as a bridge between different worlds, embodying the idea of immortality and sapience..

Each Craww's work has in itself the melancholy, the anger, the pain and the human fallow, but also the dynamism of movement, the desire, the rapture and the determination that manifest itself in a dimension of rebirth.

Artist and habitual doodler, Craww lives and works just outside of Sheffield, on the edge of the Peak District in the UK.
Surrounded by nature, he finds inspiration in natural forms and the contradictions and ambiguities of life, seeking to portray the beauty to be found, melancholic yet romantic, in the cycle of birth, death, growth and decay.
His work is a stream of consciousness ramble through the woods, uncovering the secret stories and ambiguous connections of his muses who inhabit a world populated with skulls, birds and melancholic girls embraced by flowing lines and natural forms.
Following a career in graphic design, his art is informed by a sense of balance and narrative flow. He enjoys seeing his creations taking on a life of their own as their world is realized with a mixture of elegance, balance and disciplined chaos, using oils, acrylic, graphite, charcoal, ink and whatever else is at hand.

Opening party saturday 6th may at 8 p.m. 

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