Linda Craddock's Levitations

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Linda Craddock, "Levitas: Woman with Sweater, Late Day Sun Over Mt. Rundle," 2016

oil on canvas, 42" x 54"

In Latin, Levitas, the title of Linda Craddock’s exhibition at Edmonton's Bugera Matheson Gallery from March 1 to March 14, means levity or lightness. It’s a fitting title: Craddock’s paintings feature human figures, their identities obscure, who float over mountains, down streets, and through misty, vague terrain that seems more metaphorical space than literal place.

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Linda Craddock, "Levitas: Elisaveta as a Young Woman, Waiting Over Bow Valley," 2016

oil on canvas, 48" x 72"

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Linda Craddock, "Levitas: Winter Bridge, Columbia Icefields," 2015

oil on birch, 36" x 60"

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Craddock, who has a Master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Calgary, is interested in dreams that transcend the bounds of gravity. She has also been thinking about spirituality and death as people in her family pass on. At some point, as she reflected back on her life, she recalled the old open-chair gondola that carried people up Sulphur Mountain in Banff National Park.

“I drew a female form being mechanically lifted but decided to erase the wires that held the chair, and then I erased the chair, as there was no need to depict the device itself,” she says. “She ascended, unrestrained.”

Craddock, who grew up in Vegreville, Alta. and now lives in Calgary, researched the series in Banff, poring over historic photographs and revisiting places she knew in her youth. Each of her 21 paintings took weeks of planning. First, she chose a location. Then she waited for someone to appear in her mind’s eye. Often it was a member of her family – her mother, her aunt, her  grandmother. Sometimes it was a stranger. And, at times, it was Craddock herself.

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Linda Craddock, "Levitas: Couple Passing, Mt Rundle," 2015

oil and pencil on birch, 36" x 60"

One painting, Couple Passing Mt. Rundle, shows a man and a woman floating toward each other, one heading up, the other down. They are almost close enough to touch, but they might simply pass, remaining strangers. The painting speaks to the happenstance of fate, missed connections and things that might have been. ■

Levitas is on view March 1 to March 14, 2018.