Caney Hummon comes from several generations of priests and musicians, growing up in Nashville surrounded by theology, creativity, and the arts. He began drawing as soon as he could hold a pencil and developed an obsession with rendering things realistically by the time he was five, but growing alongside this was a seemingly antithetical captivation with mythology, religion, and the fantastical. Over time, his work evolved into a conversation between realism and imagination, merging sacred themes with vivid detail, surreal light, and potent symbolism. 

Memories of Myth, his latest series exhibited at the Customs House Museum & Cultural Center, continued his exploration and pointed that lens at his own lineage, highlighting the divine in everyday life, and blurring the lines between memory, belief, and imagination. 

In works made during his time with the Residency, Caney plans to apply his process to themes of human purpose and searching, and to create (he hopes) emphatic social commentary. He will do so wielding magical realism, like so many artists who came before, as a means of pointing out deep truths and absurd lies at a time devoid of certainty. The artistic movement of magical realism is a strange and effective tool that works for this purpose because, when the stories are familiar fiction, every element becomes a recognizable symbol, and a message gains the clarity that can only exist in the ethereal.