Known for her richly layered gouache paintings of ephemeral landscapes, Craddock’s work explores fragile ecosystems and the poetic, cyclical forces that shape them.  Drawing from her own photographs of wetlands and other delicate environments, Craddock reimagines fragments of wild habitat that persist—despite human impact—within ongoing cycles of death, rebirth, and reclamation. These spaces become both specific and unmoored: at once rooted in observed reality and transformed into imagined terrains that evoke deep time, distant shores, and unseen depths. Her works function as meditations and memorials, honoring both the beauty and vulnerability of environments in flux.

Craddock’s distinctive process is integral to the meaning of the work. She constructs her surfaces from found brown paper bags, hand-stitched together with silk thread, creating a tactile ground that is already marked by use and history. Onto this terrain, she layers intricate drawing and translucent veils of gouache, allowing pigment to seep into the fibers and folds. This act of material regeneration parallels the ecological cycles she depicts, where fragmentation and renewal coexist. The resulting compositions balance density and openness, saturated color and atmospheric wash, structure and dissolution.  In the studio, Craddock embraces a rhythm that mirrors the natural world. Her process moves between immersion and distance—what she describes as “seeing the trees” and eventually “seeing the forest.” Lines unfurl across the surface, suggesting tree, sky, and water simultaneously, while luminous color fields pulse with life. The paintings emerge as spaces of tension and harmony, where the built surface and the evolving image converge.

Amid a contemporary landscape marked by rapid environmental and cultural change, Craddock’s work offers a contemplative counterpoint, inviting viewers into a slower register of time—one attuned to seasonal shifts, geological rhythms, and the quiet persistence of the natural world. Through their sensuous surfaces and evocative imagery, the paintings open a space for reflection on humanity’s relationship to nature and the possibility of reconnection. In Craddock’s words, beauty becomes “a way to breathe.”

Maysey Craddock was born in 1971 in Memphis, TN and currently lives and works in Memphis. She received an MFA from Maine College of Art, Portland, ME and a BA in Sculpture and Anthropology from Tulane University in New Orleans. Throughout her career spanning over 30 years, she has participated in numerous solo exhibitions across the United States and Germany, including the Museum of the University of Mississippi; Sears Peyton Gallery, New York; Cris Worley Fine Arts, Dallas; David Lusk Gallery, Memphis; Sarah Shepard Gallery, Larkspur, CA; Washington and Lee University, Virginia; Memphis Brooks Museum of Art; Nancy Margolis Gallery, New York; Taylor Bercier Fine Art, New Orleans; James F. Byrnes Institute, Stuttgart, Germany; Pan American Art Projects, Dallas, TX; Francine Seders Gallery, Seattle; The Foyer, Munich, Germany; Maine College of Art; and the Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans. Her work has been included in a plethora of group exhibitions and is in the collections of many institutions and organizations, including the Brooks Museum of Art; The Arkansas Arts Center; Music City Center, Nashville; Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, TN; Charles Hotel, Munich; FedEx; First Bank, Nashville; NexAir; Pfizer Corporation; St. Mary’s Episcopal School and The Assisi Foundation in Memphis. She has received numerous awards, grants and residencies, including the Tennessee Artist Fellowship from Austin Peay State University; an Individual Artist Fellowship Award from the Tennessee Arts Commission; Artist in Residence at Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, Schwandorf, Germany; Artist in Residence at Maine College of Art; Artist in Residence at Peninsula School of Art, WI and sculpture and painting residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts.