Craddock told us that, in these works, in effect, she purposefully toys with the notion of pure color when it comes to the impact she intends for them to have on viewers, even as she remains faithful to — or “pure” with regard to — her subject matter.

She explained, “Although, in these diptychs, I use the same oil pastel and Arches paper as I do in my landscape studies, these works appear to be abstract blocks of color. Drawn from life, they depend on an ‘Aha!’ moment, when a viewer realizes these are up-close depictions of the skin of a fruit or vegetable on the left and its flesh on the right — or maybe not. Devoid of what I call ‘the space between,’ these diptychs are built up of many layers; they’re scumbled, scraped and burnished by hand until they’re also about surface sheen, or incidents such as fingermarks and wipes, and of course color, always about color.”

– Edward M. Gómez, "WASHING OUR HANDS AND THINKING ABOUT “PURITY”: WHAT’S AUTHENTIC? WHAT’S REAL?", Brut Journal, December 2021