Perception : Artist Talk

Featuring Craig Cahoon in conversation with DC curator and arts writer, Sarah Tanguy

About the Artist

Based in Washington, DC, Craig Cahoon has developed a painting practice centered on sustained observation, material experimentation, and the translation of perceptual experience into paint.

Cahoon has received twenty-five artist residency fellowships in the United States and internationally, as well as six grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. He has also received support from the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, The Painted Bride in Philadelphia, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

He was selected as an American Artist Abroad by the U.S. Department of State and has presented his work in more than 25 solo exhibitions and 80 group exhibitions. His work has appeared in exhibitions including Apparitions at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts and LightWeight at the American Center for Physics. A mid-career retrospective, Reflections, was presented at the Embassy of Slovakia in Washington, DC.

Cahoon’s paintings are held in more than 170 public and private collections, including IBM, the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC.

About the Exhibition

On view November 13 through February 12, Perception is an exhibition of paintings by Craig Cahoon at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, exploring the intersection of light, color, memory, and visual experience. Cahoon’s paintings are built through layered applications of semi-transparent color, fluid marks, and iridescent interference paints. As light moves across the surface and viewers shift their position, colors appear to materialize, dissolve, and transform.

Please contact the gallery manager at sara@smithcenter.org to schedule your appointment.