Derek Cracco

I have created a series of intimate, detailed, pointillist-style paintings that focus on fields of flashes, stars and light. Everything from the quantum aspects of the photon, to more real world instances of aesthetic arrest caused by blinding light are studied. My influences range from astronomy to particle physics, shifting and oscillating between the macro and the micro, between the illusions of light in the works and the visual disruptions the images produce when viewed at close range. I use light’s ability to conceal to confront how our truths can obscure and how our beliefs can blind. I’m interested in the ephemeral qualities of light. Moments that can’t be captured. High beams on a foggy night, blinded while looking east at sunrise when your car window is covered in frost.  Moments that are not only conceal danger but are recognized as beautiful. These works embody a nuanced understanding of color theory. they combine the subtleties of color with both optics and illusion to create retinal images that work on multiple levels. The use of the field of single dots allows me to focus the aspects of the works that I find most interesting: color and light.

Derek Cracco is Associate Professor of printmaking and computer graphics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He received an MFA from Syracuse University and BFA degree from Louisiana State University.