Sydney Croskery: Tall Horizon
Bakersfield Museum of Art, Bakersfield, CA
May 30 - September 7, 2024
In Tall Horizon, Sydney Croskery presents a series of abstract works that mirror her process of painting as both a means and metaphor for navigating the complexities of contemporary life.
Croskery starts a work focusing on the physical properties of painting, using spontaneity and the qualities of the medium to begin. With no initial plans or ideas, she lets the painting guide itself, relying on the feelings and visuals dictated by the materials. As Croskery starts to assert her own decisions of composition, gesture and detail, her process moves into the psychological and philosophical, the visuals of the paintings coalescing with outside influences both personal and worldly. Working to interpret what an individual painting is about; its resulting theme guides the titling of the piece. Croskery’s artistic process of painting and naming becomes her method and meditation to cope, celebrate or merely process aspects of life.
Grieving the stark and sharply polarized present, she uses the metaphors of painting as a reminder to broaden our perspectives in a time when they are collectively narrowing. She calls for a truer look at the horizon, which is not merely a line but a plane that stretches infinitely upward. Tall Horizon serves as a call to broaden perspectives, challenging us all to transcend the limitations of the moment and embrace hopeful possibilities of the future.