Ken Craft: A Never Finished Light

ken craft: A never finished light

September 21, 2024 - October 26, 2024

Press Release

(Dallas) Ro2 Art is proud to present A Never Finished Light, a solo exhibition by Dallas-based artist Ken Craft. Known for merging representational art with conceptual themes, Craft explores the complexities of evolution, change, and our place within the natural world. His latest series draws inspiration from Richard Dawkins' reflections on the fluidity of species over time, depicting forms that transform and merge—rabbits that blur into clouds, constellations shifting across billions of years, and shadows morphing into new shapes. Through this vibrant and thought-provoking imagery, Craft invites viewers to ponder the interconnectedness of all life and the poetic beauty found in the ever-changing tapestry of nature.

Craft, who balances his artistic practice with a nearly 30-year career as a professional firefighter, brings a unique perspective to his work, combining his fascination with natural history and storytelling. His paintings often incorporate narrative elements, including written text and comic-inspired imagery, blending the scientific with the imaginative. As he prepares to retire from the fire service in January 2025, Craft looks forward to furthering his artistic journey and deepening his exploration of the natural world.
Press Release

About the Artist

Ken Craft (b. 1967, New Mexico) is a Dallas-based painter whose work merges representational art with conceptual themes, exploring natural history, evolution, and the shared struggles of all living beings. Balancing his artistic practice with a nearly 30-year career as a professional firefighter, Craft’s paintings reflect a deep curiosity about the natural world and a desire to connect with it through visual storytelling. “I explore themes such as people’s histories, natural history, evolution, and the day-to-day struggles all life experiences,” says Craft. “Sometimes it’s like I’m telling a story—I might draw or paint comics characters into the work, and there might also be written narrative.”

For nearly 30 years, Craft has served as a professional firefighter, holding the rank of Captain, and plans to retire from the fire service in January 2025. His work has been exhibited widely, including solo shows in Dallas and group exhibitions at venues such as Mark Moore Gallery in Culver City, CA, and Artspace 111 in Ft. Worth, TX, where he was awarded the Top Choice prize in 2015. His work has also been featured in New American Paintings and showcased at the MASS MoCA residency program. Craft is represented in Dallas by Ro2 Art and by Mark Moore Fine Art in Orange Park Acres, CA, and plans to apply to several MFA programs following his retirement.

ARTIST Statement

These paintings are loosely based on a snippet from a chapter in Richard Dawkins’ book, The Greatest Show On Earth. Dawkins suggests that Plato’s arguments for essentialism, or the fixedness of species, are partially responsible for some people’s difficulty in understanding the concept of change over time and evolution. He provides a vivid example, illustrating the changes that one might observe in a direct line of female animals over vast periods of time. For illustrative purposes, Dawkins chooses rabbits. How might a female rabbit’s one-hundred-thousandth, or even one-millionth grandmother have looked? Each generation of female rabbit would appear almost identical to its immediate ancestral mother or its immediate descendant daughter. But if you were to go far enough back in time, what you see would not even resemble a modern rabbit. Eventually, you’d find a common ancestor linking the rabbit to a chimpanzee, a giraffe, or even a jellyfish.

Within these paintings, there are things that resemble rabbits—but only for a brief amount of time, or in some cases, much longer. Clouds and rock formations, shadows and murmurations of starlings, even the evening pinpoints of stars and our sky-drawn constellations, form different pictures over deep timescales. If an observer could have looked at the night sky two billion years ago, what different pictures might they have seen? And what about a billion years from now?

During these frightening times, I find comfort in the study of natural history. The scientific reality that all life on this planet is threaded together is powerfully poetic to me. I feel a strong connection to the work of authors like Barbara Kingsolver and Richard Powers, who explore similar themes within their novels. As the most willfully destructive force on the planet, I believe we humans have a lot to make up for. I have long hoped that people might see themselves as entirely part of the natural world and not above it or outside of it. We are cousins to trees and butterflies and rabbits—and, of course, to each other.