You could call his paintings slightly skewed.
Louisiana artist and professor Michael Crespo is fascinated with stark contrasts. He paints fish set against cityscapes and squid floating in a sea of black.
In one of his paintings, there is a large sheep wearing a wreath of red roses.
The images he conjures are born out of, as he put it, “a thought on another day, in another field of mind, in another act of doing.”
“Legends and Lagoons,” a collection of Crespo’s oil paintings, is the featured collection at the David Lusk Gallery in the Laurelwood Shopping Center, near The University of Memphis. The show runs until March 30.
“My painting is about the beauty, the power, the vulnerability, and fragility of nature,” said Crespo.
Crespo, who was born in New Orleans in 1947, said he has always been around art.
“Michael now teaches at LSU,” said Melissa Taylor, director of the gallery. “This is his third show with us, and his work has been displayed in places around Memphis for almost ten years.”
For the last 30 years, Crespo’s watercolors and paintings have also been shown around the country. He’s authored a series of painting instruction textbooks used in classrooms today.
The exhibition features close to twenty of Crespo’s paintings, in addition to some of his poetry.
“Michael typically paints things like an image of a bird, a fish or a flower against a black background, to make for a nice dramatic effect,” said Taylor.
“Lagoons and Legends” is the result.
“I find these traits mirrored in the human condition,” Crespo said. “I am also painting what I know — my own seascape of emotion and reason.”
He has included some of his poetry for visitors to the exhibition.
“Rest my form in dark, branching streams,” he writes, in the program notes for the collection. “Look afresh, for we are the skilled remnants of paradise.”
“Remnants,” another of his paintings, depicts a fragile dove flying against a murky city skyline.
