About the Artist

For as long as I can remember, I have always had an interest in art. My only early exposure to any kind of visual art consisted primarily of comic books, Catholic holy cards and statues, and animated cartoons. There being no art program in my high school, it wasn’t until I began taking classes at the University of New Orleans that I was formally introduced to the world of Fine Arts. Finding comfort and familiarity in the limited images of my early years, I gravitated to more of a graphic design degree as an undergraduate. After graduating from Northwestern State University of Louisiana in 1976 and working in the Advertising Design field for a few years, I decided that my real interest was in Fine Arts. I wanted to develop my own unique images instead of illustrations for commercial use. Once accepted into Louisiana State University’s Painting and Drawing M.F.A. program, my search for visual direction led me to my original personal and traditional mythological and religious imagery.

 As a painter who has worked primarily in acrylics, I felt that the work that I did should reflect my interpretation of the nature of the material in which I was working: flat and hard-edged.  I did learn to manipulate the surfaces over the years, but I returned to a flat application in my later work, especially when I began working on wood, wallpaper, and eraser board. Upon finishing graduate school, I was hired by Delgado Community College as an instructor in Visual Communications. The repetition of teaching two-dimensional design courses over a thirty- year period reinforced simple geometric shapes in my own compositions, and I realized that the inclination to emphasize design elements over rendering  had dominated the formal concepts.

I have always considered my paintings as personal illustrations, an extension of myself.  As I later expanded the scope of my individual vision, I came to see that my aesthetic instinct was utilizing a handful of specific, repeated images as symbols to portray a shorthand version of content.  The fish represents the soul, the bird represents nature, the sheets of Helvetic type represent civilization and order, while water represents life. The triangle represents shelter in the form of a house (home) or church (temple), and the rectangular slab is the altar where artists sacrifice their time and ultimately the majority of their conscious life. Much of my finished work focuses on an isolated or solitary organic image (figure) at odds with its environment (ground).  I feel that making art is an intensely reflective journey, like writing a journal. That’s why the process is always evolving, moving along, and occasionally making that elusive, sometimes surprising connection with an unknown viewer.

RESUME

CRAIG BERTHOLD
June 15, 1955
6644 Bellaire Dr.  New Orleans  Louisiana  70124
[email protected]

EDUCATION
1978  B.S. Advertising Design  Northwestern State University of Louisiana
1978  B.A. Art  Northwestern State University of Louisiana
1984  M.F.A. Painting and Drawing  Louisiana State University

CAREER EMPLOYMENT
1984-2006  Delgado Community College   Professor, Visual Communications
2001-2006 Delgado community College, Department Chair, Visual Arts
2012-2018  Delgado Community College   Contract Instructor, Studio Arts

SOLO AND RECENT EXHIBITIONS
1984 Undercurrents,  Delgado Community College,  New Orleans Louisiana
1985 Two Person Show,  Aaron-Hastings Gallery,  New Orleans Louisiana
1987 Illustrations of the Unnatural World,  Duplantier Gallery,  New Orleans Louisiana
1997 Monkeys, Birds, Fish and Dogs,  Center for Contemporary Arts,  Shreveport Louisiana
1999 Black, Red, and Blue,  Mercury Gallery,  New Orleans Louisiana
2015 La Isla Misteriosa,  DuMois Gallery,  New Orleans Louisiana   
2018  Louisiana Contemporary,  Ogden Museum of Southern Art,  New Orleans  Louisiana

ARTIST STATEMENT
Based on the tradition of figure/ground narrative painting, organic forms of nature (figures, animals, birds) are placed in natural and unnatural environments. The organic shapes are usually life-sized and executed in acrylic on atypical surfaces like eraser board, doors, wallpaper, and previously printed paintings. Man and nature appear to be at odds with their place in the two-dimensional world.