Chris Cran: Tome.
Foreword by John Will

I first met Chris Cran in 1983. He was in a parking lot trying to park one of his many jalopies that he had at the time and I told him that I could act as his navigator. He refused my offer by yelling at me, "Avast old man! I am the Captain of my own ship so don't shiver me timbers or I'll run a torpedo into your broadside." He then proceeded to pester me for the next twenty years. Our association has had its ups and down but all in all, it has been a fruitful one--fruitful for him at least.

My own career was just starting to ascend about that time but since that first meeting it has been in a downward spiral and I expect it was a result of all the "broadsides" I have been forced to endure. I don't hold this against him because he is like the Spanish conquistador, Coronado, except that, unlike the bumbling Spaniard, Cran has found the location of his artistic Seven Cities of Gold. We all affectionately call him "Corno" in deference to his 17h century counterpart but, unlike his predecessor, Chris is a benevolent colonizer taking care to occasionally defer to the "savages" he has encountered by okaying the occasional exhibition at some local hole-In-the wall gallery.

However, it must be admitted that the many artistic discoveries he has unearthed in his journey amount to a mother lode of creative nuggets. At first glance, his work may appear to be disparate and unfocused. First he does this, then he does that, then he goes back and redoes this. One might say that he is a virtual whirling dervish of the art world...but...the man whirls like Baryshnikov but more importantly, unlike Mikhail, Cran moves with a purpose.

All of the work is grounded in a belief and faith in the power of the painted image. Ranging from his early series of popular cultured, paradoxical, self portraits to recent abstractions which question our idea of visual perception and reaffirm a commitment to beauty, the work has always been focused and has always been passionate. Two of Cran's wills (Whoops! I mean wells.) of inspiration are the camera and the idea of theater. Ironically, both the theater and the camera lie. Cran, on the other hand, does not. Rather, he directs us through the maze of his gaze and in so doing, unlike other colonizers, enriches the inhabitants of the worlds he has conquered.

Sail on oh mighty Ship of State.