Chris Cran's painting, Large Orange Laughing Woman (1991), is featured on the cover of the Odds' latest album, The Most Beautiful Place on Earth.
Loved by Millions
John Will: Loved by Millions
April 6 – June 2, 2013
The video production of Loved by Millions coincided with the development of Chris Cran's exhibition of the same name at the AGW in 1989. Created by the artist's long-time friend and colleague, painter John Will of Calgary, the video production playfully responds to the documentary tradition, featuring artist-subject, Chris Cran. John Will is a prominent artist known best for his works in painting, his critiques of popular culture, his humorous and ironic means of visual resolution. Will's Loved by Millions traces the journey of Cran by air from his home city of Calgary to Detroit, and then by limousine to Windsor, to attend the opening of his 1989 solo show with his broker-agent and chic.Read More
Wilding Cran
Chris Cran is now represented by Wilding Cran, a new Los Angeles based gallery founded by Naomi Wilding and Anthony Cran.
A Concise History of Canadian Painting
Chris Cran is included in A Concise History of Canadian Painting.
Self-Portrait Accepting A Cheque For The Commission Of This Painting | Oil on canvas | 102.5" x 96" | 1988
Collector Peter Boyd in Globe and Mail
Marsha Lederman profiles Chris Cran collector Peter Boyd in the Globe and Mail:
As soon as he left the University of Western Ontario and landed a job, Peter Boyd bought a car, some furniture and his first work of art.
He has since spent “hundreds of thousands” of dollars on his art habit, running out of wall space at home and keeping much of his collection in storage (necessitated, in part, by the 2009 sale of his oil-field seismic-services company Arcis Corp., and the subsequent disappearance of office walls on which to hang the work).
Influenced by childhood trips to the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ont., he began his collection with historical work by artists such as David Milne, but has sold or gifted most of it and now exclusively collects contemporary art. His collection of about 100 works (it peaked at about 200) is populated with artists connected to the Canadian West, including Chris Cran, Douglas Coupland, Attila Richard Lukacs and Geoffrey James, but he also owns work by Robert Mapplethorpe and Eric Fischl. “You’re always falling in love with art if you love art,” he says.
His latest entrepreneurial venture is Genius Wines; its first release a pricey Sonoma County cabernet sauvignon he calls Creo. “It comes from the Latin word for creativity,” he says. “It’s my tribute to artists who are geniuses.”
Cran Receives 2011 Board of Governors Alumni Award of Excellence from the Alberta College of Art & Design
ACAD Awards the prestigious 2011 Board of Governors’ Alumni Award of Excellence to Norman Faulkner, Alex Janvier and Chris Cran
May 17, 2011 (Calgary, Alberta) - The Alberta College of Art + Design (ACAD) is pleased to announce that the 2011 Board of Governors’ Alumni Award of Excellence will be awarded to Norman Faulkner, Alex Janvier and Chris Cran at the 2011 ACAD convocation ceremony on May 19th, 2011. This award is given annually to an alumnus or alumna of ACAD who has made a significant contribution to the arts community and has demonstrated excellence in their field of practice. The Board of Governors of ACAD is especially pleased to recognize these three key members of our alumni community with this award, and to honour the important contributions they have made to the arts and to the fields of craft internationally. Mr.Faulkner, Mr.Janvier and Mr.Cran were each was nominated based on their work in establishing new and important areas of the arts for Alberta, and for Canada, for the dedication and support they have given to the artistic community and for the establishment of their own active practices as a visual artists.Read More
Art of the Peace Visual Arts Symposium
Cran joins the panel in the 2007 Art of Peace Visual Arts Symposium in Grande Prairie, AB:
On October 12th and 13th, the fifth annual Art of the Peace Visual Arts Symposium once again brings together artists and art lovers with four fascinating presenters in Grande Prairie, Alberta.
Chris Cran
Renowned Calgary painter Chris Cran is interested in the way that a painting is perceived. He contends that we are “hard-wired to stare at a rectangle with coloured stuff on it that’s almost dead flat” and see a vista in it. That the way we look at a painting is “the pleasurable side of looking for a tiger in the bush.”Read More
Abstract Painting In Canada
Chris Cran | Black Painting #1 | Oil on canvas | 4' x 3' | 1993
Chris Cran | Tiara | Acrylic on canvas | 30" x 18" | 2000
Two of Cran's works, 'Black Painting #1' and 'Tiara' are included in 'Abstract Painting in Canada' edited by Roald Nasgaard and published by Douglas and McIntyre, and Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2007.
Chris Cran Receives the Keith Evans Memorial Scholarship from the Banff Centre
Alberta artist Chris Cran announced as Keith Evans Memorial Scholarship recipient
Alberta based artist, Chris Cran has been described in The New York Times as a painter who "…has built a career on tampering with people’s perceptions." Widely exhibited across Canada and internationally recognized, Cran has become known for turning nothing into something, with the slightest push. Cran’s paintings, included in numerous Canadian collections, have to do with visual tricks, images that appear one way but have been made another way. Currently the studio fellow for The Banff Centre’s Visual Arts Optic Nerve Residency, Cran has been named as the recipient of this year's Keith Evans Memorial Scholarship.Read More