MAP PAINTINGS
Map Paintings
These works represent a growing body of paintings by Marc Craig, created directly onto vintage road maps, travel charts, and geographical guides. What began as a visual experiment has evolved into something far more personal—a kind of internal cartography. The maps aren’t just backdrops; they are the territory, charting Marc’s own questions about identity, place, and the elusive notion of direction in life.
As the obsession with maps has deepened, so too has the work’s psychological depth. These pieces embrace a darker, more feral energy—less concerned with coherence than with raw emotional truth. What emerges are not traditional portraits or landscapes, but manifestations: creatures, skeletons, fragmented bodies, and absurd hybrids that feel halfway between memory and nightmare.
The act of painting over maps—tools designed to help us navigate—becomes a quiet contradiction. These figures are not here to guide; they are here to confront. They speak to what gets buried in the quest to “find oneself”: the confusion, the impulse to destroy and rebuild, the shadow self.
Informed by Jungian shadow work and Marc’s ongoing process of psychological excavation, each painting becomes a meditation on lostness—not as failure, but as fertile ground for transformation.
