Craig Mooney

River Reflection by Craig Mooney, Large Contemporary Landscape Oil Painting

2021

Born and raised in the heart of midtown Manhattan, New York, Craig Mooney’s roots in art go back to his youth. His father, an amateur artist, taught him how to create oil paintings from discarded art supplies found on city streets. To Mooney, the city was an endless source of inspiration at an early age. Though he would later take classes in art both in high school and college, he regards this early exposure as the truest form of training he had ever received. After a brief career in the film industry, Mooney moved out of New York in the mid-90s to rural Vermont. The open and bucolic settings of the countryside allowed Mooney new sources of inspiration. Mooney makes paintings of dramatic moments and heightened emotionality that is known for being expansive and expressive. Though a representational painter, he incorporates a myriad of abstract qualities throughout his paintings. In his figurative work, Mooney romanticizes his subjects and presents them in an atmospheric lens that is best described as dreamlike. His paintings appear to be capturing a moment suspended in time. While his work feels familiar, it is not specific. Rather it is, on a very basic level, the symbolism of what could have been had been or will be. Today, Mooney devotes himself full time to his art at his studio in Vermont.