Today we’d like to introduce you to Craig Ford.
Craig, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
Born and raised in Atlanta since the sixties, Craig Ford studied art at Young Harris College in Young Harris GA before transferring to the University of Georgia in Athens, where he majored in graphic design and illustration. He later worked as a designer/illustrator and art director for several agencies before starting his own digital art studio business, “Design by Ford,” in 1999. It wasn’t until 2005 that Ford returned to painting. Additionally, he teaches art classes at the Roswell Visual Arts Center and is an adjunct art professor at Young Harris College.
He sees himself as a visual storyteller, taking ordinary objects and putting them into different contexts and discovering completely different meanings and ideas in their combinations. Nostalgic icons or everyday items find a place in his compositions; big vividly colored pieces. Ford’s work has been regularly exhibited at the Atlanta Artist Center, the Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art and was selected as one of Atlanta’s emerging artists by Anne Irwin Fine Art. Currently he is represented by The CSparkman Group in Atlanta and the North Park Art Gallery in Marietta.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I paint in a realistic, representational style for the most part. I work in oils, watercolors and mixed media. The oil paintings are typically done in my studio but I do like to get out for some pleinaire painting and watercolor work is ideal for me because of its portability. This year I’ve begun to work in a mixed media of oils, collage and photography. I find my mixed media work to exist with a dreamlike, distant memory type of imagery that most folks can relate to but the heavy paint and snippet of torn paper creates a contrasting texture that enhances the main image in a way that our distant memories act where we remember bits and pieces of someplace but lack a full story.
My artistic references range from David Hockney, Wayne Thiebaud, Fairfield Porter, Richard Diebenkorn, and Jennifer Bartlett to David Lynch and Bridget Riley to name a few. My work usually contains a concept of some sort but is open to the viewer’s interpretation.
The sterotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
It’s always a struggle getting started for most folks and it was for me as well. You just have to keep at it and have several “irons in several fires” at all times. Get in group exhibitions, find solo exhibit opportunities, find representation where you can, teach art, sell art online, just any and all ways within your reach.
And ride it out, I’ve had to wash dishes for a few months until something else came along but I always kept drawing and painting. It becomes part of your lifestyle and you learn to make art on a tight budget and when the money gets better you can move on to other areas. Find other folks who make art and get tips here and there. How are they making it? Be adaptable, want it to happen and it will. Be prolific as much and as often as you can.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
I have a web site www.craigfordfineart.com and can be followed on Instagram @craigfordfineart I’m represented by The CSparkman Group here in Atlanta and The North Park Art Gallery in Marietta. I also have several pieces that can be viewed at the Rojas Gallery in Smyrna.
Artwork can be purchase thru one of the above organizations or via a direct message in Instagram. I will have several paintings on exhibit at Spectrum Miami this December during Art Basel 2018, so if folks are in South Florida then, please stop by and say hello.
Contact Info:
- Website: craigfordfineart.com
- Email: craig_ford@att.net
- Instagram: @craigfordfineart
Image Credit:
All artwork ©Craigfordfineart 2018
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