Maysey Craddock: to the heart of the woods

New York, NY— Sears-Peyton Gallery is pleased to present Maysey Craddock’s solo exhibition, to the heart of the woods. These ten paintings exist as references to place: they are themselves records of the unfurling life cycles of a tree, a copse, a shore.

The wind, the water, the weather and time are forever shaping the edges of things, but this unfurling ribbon of natural change is fraying at the edges, pressured by the forces and appetites of human consumption. Out in the world, wild expanses divide and fragment, and in the studio Craddock paints to remember these spaces and find a way to calm the overwhelm that comes with every news cycle. She reimagines fragments of wild habitat that persist, despite human impact, within ongoing cycles of death, rebirth, and reclamation. These are spaces of tension and harmony, where the built surface and the evolving image converge. In to the heart of the woods, the title piece of the show, Craddock leads the viewer into this tension, an electric meeting point of deep fuchsia and orange, the place where sky meets land and land meets water.  

The materiality of Craddock’s paintings is a marriage of her sculpture and drawing practices. Using paper bags as a surface, she must start by undoing them, a form of restarting the life cycle of this natural material. The surface goes through a transformation as she applies a wash, presses them, and sews them together by hand with a silk thread, ultimately arriving at a form of textile or quilt. Like sculptures, they have terrain, there are folds, and there’s always a mending. Craddock likes to leave the various stamps on the bags as a reminder of the legacy of production of recycled materials. This cycle of repurposing material is inherent to Craddock’s continued exploration of her surroundings and finding ways to record what lies ahead. 

Maysey Craddock: to the heart of the woods is on view September 10 - October 17, 2026 at Sears-Peyton Gallery’s Chelsea location at 210 Eleventh Avenue. There is an evening reception September 10th from 5:00 – 7:00 p.m. Exhibitions are open to the public Tuesday - Friday from 11:00 am – 5:00pm and Saturdays from 12:00 pm - 5:00pm. For more information or to request further press images, please contact the gallery at info@searspeyton.com.