The Journal Star Peoria
2000
Peoria Contemporary Art Center

Claire Wolf Krantz
Chicago Area Artist Delves into Paradoxes
by Gary A Panetta

The works of Chicago artist Claire Wolf Krantz represent a different way of toying with perception. Her collection of mixed‑media paintings, on exhibit through Nov. 30, blend paint and photography as well as Western and non‑Western influences. She's particularly intrigued by the tension between the natural and the man‑-made.
"A lot of my work has to do with the interrelationship of nature and what we do, but not in a judgmental way at all," Krantz said. "(I’m interested in) the changes that happen to things that we do and to nature itself. Nature changes."

One piece, for instance, employs photographs of an ancient aqueduct and a modern bridge. The pictures are small and seem to emerge gradually from the swirling, abstract
background. Another work blends images from temples and eaves in India's eastern section. All of the pieces in the Contemporary Art Center exhibit are tall and rectangular shaped, recalling the large hanging scrolls that ancient Chinese landscape painters used.

"Painting is a language," Krantz said. "The Chinese language for landscape painting has always been very interesting to me. In Chinese hanging scrolls, it's a little person wandering through the landscape. But for me, it's my eye or the viewer's eye that sort of walks through and stops and looks at little things. I lead your eye, but I leave you free, also."

 

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.