AMY MCCORMAC & CINDY CRAIG: FORGET ME KNOT

TWO-PERSON SHOW
MARCH 16-APRIL 12, 2024

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, MARCH 16, 6-8PM|AUTHOR READING AT 7PM

IN CONVERSATION WITH NOVELIST KATYA APEKINA, AUTHOR OF THE DEEPER THE WATER, THE UGLIER THE FISH

The Middle Room is pleased to present Forget Me Knot, a two-person show of paintings by LA-based artists Cindy Craig and Amy McCormac. This exhibition, curated by Shannon Rae Fincke, will be on view from March 16-April 12, 2024.

Forget Me Knot, is a striking 2-woman show featuring dark, yet colorful work that is bravely tackling maternal mental health and dysfunctional mother-daughter relationships—in bold and deeply moving interdisciplinary conversation with the novel The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, written by Katya Apekina, also of LA.

Craig’s work explores the human experience, inviting viewers to confront the silent struggles that unfold behind closed doors and within the folds of societal expectations. Through her multidisciplinary approach employing watercolor, acrylic, collage, and photography, Craig unveils the plight of women as distraught housewives, confined within decorative prisons of objectification and isolation. She weaves narratives of infidelity, burnout, and loneliness, infusing her work with inflections of gallows humor that both disturb and captivate. Yet, under the surface of apparent distress, Craig surprises her audience with unexpected, playful combinations of materials, delivering a searing feminist message beneath the pretty, sometimes silly exterior. Her art becomes a nuanced exploration of the difference between the self presented to the world and the self carefully shielded behind closed doors.

McCormac’s work concentrates on the misunderstandings and missed connections in her family that created anxiety, depression and damaging patterns of human behavior. She paints dark, yet compassionate and humorous narratives in cinematic compositions using a bright palette to depict specific highly emotional moments experienced between herself and her family members throughout periods of her life from the perspective of being a daughter and a mother. McCormac honestly and compassionately explores the impact of familial patterns of reactions in her powerful large scale paintings portraying intense and raw internal conflicts, ambivalence and confrontations. Vibrant colors, expressive brushstrokes and abstraction heighten the psychological and emotional temperature of the people and stories being remembered and currently examined. McCormac creates an authentic depiction of motherhood and familial relationships in opposition to society’s idealized version of these themes.

Katya Apekina’s captivating debut novel The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish moves through a selection of first-person accounts, written with a sinister sense of humor, and powerfully captures the quiet torment of two sisters craving the attention of a parent they can’t, and shouldn’t, have to themselves. Apekina disquietingly crooks the lines between fact and fantasy, between escape and freedom, and between love and obsession—and tells the story of 16-year-old Edie who finds their mother Marianne dangling in the living room from an old jump rope, puddle of urine on the floor, barely alive. Upstairs, 14-year-old Mae had fallen into one of her trances, often a result of feeling too closely attuned to her mother’s dark moods. After Marianne is unwillingly admitted to a mental hospital, Edie and Mae are forced to move from their childhood home in Louisiana to New York to live with their estranged father, Dennis, a former civil rights activist and literary figure on the other side of success. The girls, grieving and homesick, are at first wary of their father’s affection, but soon Mae and Edie’s close relationship begins to fall apart—Edie remains fiercely loyal to Marianne, convinced that Dennis is responsible for her mother’s downfall, while Mae, suffocated by her striking resemblances to her mother, feels pulled toward their father. The girls move in increasingly opposing and destructive directions as they struggle to cope with outsized pain, and as the history of Dennis and Marianne’s romantic past clicks into focus, the family fractures further.

Cindy Craig is currently based in Los Angeles and is a native of the San Francisco Bay area, and a graduate of UCLA. Craig has exhibited nationally at museums and galleries in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago. Notable exhibitions include "I WANT Candy: The Sweet Stuff in American Art" at the Hudson River Museum, "Greetings From the American Dream" at the Riverside Art Museum, "Liquid Los Angeles: Currents of Contemporary Watercolor" at the Pasadena Museum of Art, and the "National Biennial Watercolor Invitational" at the Parkland Art Gallery in Chicago. Craig's work has been featured in publications such as New American Paintings, The New York Sun, Harper's, ArtWeek, American Art Collector, and Art on Paper. Her work was featured on KNBC news, spotlighting the emotional challenges faced by women during the pandemic.

Amy McCormac is originally from Chicago, IL and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. Her work has been exhibited in group shows in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, and for Swoon’s Heliotrope Foundation at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City, NJ. McCormac’s paintings are featured in numerous private collections in the US, and press includes Create Magazine.

Katya Apekina is a novelist, screenwriter and translator. Her new novel, Mother Doll, came out on March 12, 2024. Her debut, The Deeper the Water the Uglier the Fish, was named a Best Book of 2018 and was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. Katya translated poetry and prose from Russian for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky (FSG, 2008), short-listed for the Best Translated Book Award. Born in Moscow, she lives in Los Angeles.