Craig Alan

Craig Alan was born in 1971 in San Bernardino, California. Though always drawn to art, Alan's creativity did not fully develop until his family transferred to New Orleans as a child. The vivacious culture nurtured Alan's capacity for detailed visual interpretation. Inspired by the city's enthusiasm for creative expression, he began exploring his own innovative impulses.

Alan's earliest experimentation took the form of street portraiture, an endeavour that helped him perfect his flair for replicating the human figure and afforded the budding artist a sense of economic security. He saved his portrait earnings to pay for school and art supplies. Though he always planned to pursue a formal art education, Alan continued to develop technically and conceptually through his own diligent studies.

While at the University of Mobile, Alabama, Alan undertook vigorous training in art. His enthusiasm for his studies immediately propelled him into the scholastic limelight. With a focus on studio arts, Alan earned an area award for academic excellence. The University's most prestigious exhibition, "Art with a Southern Drawl," featured 42 of Alan's pieces, chosen from a field of more than 1,600 submissions.

A minor concentration in theater further diversified Alan's craft, imbuing him with additional techniques in makeup and set design. This blending of disparate influences and media is visually apparent in all of Alan's works, which demonstrate a broad knowledge and appreciation of the human form as well as the colorful world these beings occupy. Combining his skills into elaborate textures, hues and compositions, Alan's artwork reveals a technical sophistication as well as an elaborate imagination.

Alan's collections run the gamut from abstract expressionism to haunting, graphic realism, each one a reflection of its creator's unique vision. His prolific career is a culmination of artistic knowledge and a keen aesthetic sense, one developed not through intensive schooling but deep within recesses of this artist's brilliant mind.