User:Will Harvey/sandbox/Graham Crowley

Biography
Graham Crowley Graham Neil Crowley (Born in Romford, Essex 3 May 1950) is a British contemporary painter. He was educated at Rayleigh Sweyne Grammar School in Essex before going to St Martin’s School of Art, London 1968–1972 where he studied Painting and received a Dip AD in 1972. He then studied Painting for a further three years at the Royal College of Art, London 1972–1975 where he was awarded an MA (RCA). He was Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art 1998–2006. He became a Fellow of the RCA in 1999. He was Artist in Residence to Oxford University and a Visiting Fellow of St Edmund Hall 1983–1984. He has exhibited widely and his work is held internationally in both public and private collections. He has written extensively about contemporary Painting and what he has described as a crisis in Fine Art Higher Education. His letter in Art Monthly in March 2007 elicited around 1500 responses supporting his analysis. It was subsequently reprinted in The Jackdaw and serve d as a feature piece in The Observer. Art Monthly declined to publish his subsequent letter ‘The Blind Screwing The Blind’. The Jackdaw did publish it – in full – in autumn 2015.

Crowley’s father is a toolmaker and electro-mechanical engineer with Kelvin & Hughes which specialises in marine navigational systems. Brother, Stephen, born in 1952.

Graham became a painter in the early 1970s out of conviction for the validity of painting, at a time when artists of the ‘1968 generation’ were seeking to break the link with painting and its traditions. In a deliberate reaction to British dependence on American models, Crowley looked initially to ‘European Modernism’, and the clamorous, bright, exciting, ‘non-figurative’ images he was making by the late 1970s were directly inspired by Leger. Martin Holman

Quite quickly his visual language moved to the figurative, with the need to draw content into his images: with his conscious adoption of ‘genre’ painting, his subject became increasingly his own life and work experience. Following landscape paintings of housing estates focussed on urban decay, Crowley directed his attention to the genres of rural landscape and flower painting, the landscape of West Cork inspiring his most recent paintings.

Education

1961-8 Attends Rayleigh Sweyne Technical and Grammar School after parents turn down scholarship to King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford. Passes ‘A’ levels in art, economics and mathematics. Writes and performs in school stage reviews. Hobbies include drawing and model making, animated cartoons and comic strips. 1968-72 attends St. Martin’s School of Art, London, progressing from foundation to undergraduate diploma course in painting in 1969. Tutors include Gillian Ayres and Harry Mundy; meets Raymond Durgnat and Michael Williams. Fellow students include Richard Deacon, Craigie Horsfield, Andrzej Klimowski, Richard Miller and David Wiseman. Graduates in 1972. Vice-president of the school’s students’ union and active in the London Art Schools Alliance. Writes satirical plays and performs them with Bobby Baker (Mystery on the Rebound) and Peter Eddleston, Stephen Farthing, Wiseman and other contemporaries (The Revenge of Doctor X).

1969 Makes first visit to Ireland. 1972-5 Studies painting at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London; awarded MA in 1975. Meets fellow student Michael Major and tutors include Peter de Francia, John Golding and Alan Miller.

Involved with the ‘Fine Art Society’ set up by fellow students; speakers invited to meetings include Richard Wollheim. Visits Italy and France, including Musée Léger at Biot.

Life and Career

1978 Marries Sally Townshend, a contemporary at the RCA, studying environmental design. First son, Robin, born in 1982, and second, Pearce, in 1985.

1978-85 Visiting lecturer in painting, RCA. Also visiting lectureships at Winchester School of Art (1978–82) and at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London (1984-6). Occupies studio in Baldwin’s Gardens, off Gray’s Inn Road, London until early 1980s. Returns to painting after self-imposed break of about a year. Artist-in-residence to Oxford University and visiting fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford (1982-3). Becomes Member of the Fine Art Faculty, British School at Rome (1982-8). Lives and works in south-east London (1983-6). Member of the advisory board, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London (1985-9). Senior Fellow in painting, South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education, Cardiff (1986-9). Member of the National Advisory Board Fine Art Working Committee of the Department of Education and Science (1987-8).

Family moves to cottage in Staunton in the Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire (1989) then returns to London in 1922. One year appointment as tutor in painting, Kingston University (1993-4). Buys house in Skibbereen, West Cork, Ireland, where he spends vacations. On retirement from teaching in 2006 moves permanently to Skibbereen. Artist-in-residence at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London. Commissioned by Stephen Stuart-Smith to illustrate The Mortmere Stories by Christopher Isherwood and Edward Upward for Enitharmon Press (1994-5). Commissioned by Richard Appignanesi to illustrate Marquis de Sade for Beginners, written by Stuart Hood in the series by Icon Books of graphic guides using comic-strip format (1995). Tutor, Drawing Studio, RCA (1995-6). Head of Fine Art, City and Guilds of London Art School, London (1996-8). Professor of Painting, RCA, succeeding Paul Huxley (1998–2006). Chairs panel of judges for the Jerwood Contemporary Painters exhibition, London (2007). Initiates debate on fine art in British higher education which is pursued by the art periodical, Art Monthly. Member of the jury for the twenty-fifth John Moores Liverpool Exhibition (2008).

Lived and worked in West Cork (2006-9).

Currently lives and works in Suffolk.

SIX PHASES

Early Work

Crowley’s affinity with the cartoon-like image was borne out from its origins in the youthful consumer of film, television and British comics. Crowley looked aesthetically and critically at the work of Ed Roth, creator of Rat Fink and of Hot Rod culture; Hanna-Barbera studio (Huckleberry Hound, The Flintstones, Top Cat) and especially George Herriman, the American cartoonist and creator of the comic strip, Krazy Kat. At the RCA he started to question art’s borrowings and this drew him to the pictorial language of the painter, Fernand Léger. He absorbed a broad sweep across Léger’s production, from the abstracted, Cubist images before the First World War to the purist paintings of 1918-25. In his London studio (Baldwin’s Gardens, off the Gray’s Inn Road), Crowley painted Tug, (which literally tugs between Cubism and animation) and paintings such as Canvey (1976) which relate to gestural painting, the discipline of drawing and to the spatial organisation of low relief. The principal elements echo Léger but Crowley departs from that influence with the insertion of shadows within the space thus creating animated structures that bounce around the paintings. Using collage and bright acrylic colours, Crowley utilised a superficial rawness – what William Feaver described as ‘Elastoplast pink and brightest evergreen deposited on the picture surface like painterly sandwich spread.’ Crowley was applying paint with a pointing trowel to create what he has described as a ‘wilfully ham-fisted and robust’ painting that tests the boundaries with its aspirations to the ‘vulgar’, ‘low’ and vernacular. Then there is the significant shift with So and Sew (1980) that juggles representation with anamorphism.

Still Lives

After the 1970s Crowley ventured more into the vernacular expression of pictorial language. The ambitions of The Living Room (1983) were the polar opposite of the heroic, romantic connotations featured in the ‘new image’ painting of contemporaries like Christopher Le Brun or Alan Miller around 1982, but rather with the interaction with the banal objects of every day life in the home, cheese grating, ironing, darning and watching television. Crowley’s first one-man exhibition, at the AIR Gallery in London in February–March 1982, showed the new interiors alongside landscapes and scenes from nature, artificial in colour and filling the picture plane. One of the largest canvases featured a bird’s nest viewed from above where inside, uncomfortably, are three huge eggs which the nest can just about contain, each one a different primary colour as if modified genetically by pesticides. The centrepiece of Table Manners IV (1985) is a meat pie on a table in a room where an open door causes a draught that sets curtains billowing – the first sign of something entering from the outside. That description is less than half the ‘story’; the viewer who grasps that then tackles the metaphors in cutlery and pies to advance the significance of the image. They make for uncomfortable viewing – you can almost hear the crash of broken glass, the scrape of metal on metal and the general cacophany of chaos. Mirrors hang precariously, perspectives are distorted, light and breezes invade – someone’s going to be in trouble. So, Crowley’s ‘new image’ subverted realism as quickly as it was brought to bear. Airborne metallic knives mimic missiles in flight over the meat, vegetables and other natural produce of the land that are the stuff of life, seizing on the dangerous state of the world. His dystopic ‘fly-on-the-wall’ treatments mirrored television documentaries such as The Family (1974) made by the BBC. Crowley’s paintings projected the possibility to the viewer that the artist had reached in and grabbed a piece of his home. Sometimes with glee and sometimes with sorrow, home was portrayed as a place in flux and improvisation and potentially seriously threatening, not cosy. Another transitional painting is Light Fiction (1986) where Crowley’s signature technique of painting with glazes over the painting only described by the direction of the white brush marks that dictate the drawing. By employing the then wiped back layers of Payne’s Grey, Davis Grey, Rose Madder et al Crowley offers a luminescent vision that pushes and pulls the planes – it’s not so much brush work as rag work.

Cityscapes

With Bachelard’s Poetics of Space as an inspiration, Crowley continued to employ his glazing technique but further to explore notions of inside out and outside in, both literally but also where the invasion of space is encountered culminating in Peripheral Vision (1987) which surely is one of the most powerful painting of threatening urban insecurity there is. The cinematic split screen motif of Law and Order (1988) hark back to Crowley’s earlier influences and triggers of the animated world but in paintings like The Chain Store (1988) every line is an aggressively broken tooth of decayed inner cities from roofs, to factories to chimney pots, zigzagging towards you – they have all been hurt and they offer only hurt. It’s significant that these paintings were made when Crowley was Senior Fellow in Painting at South Glamorgan Institute of Art based in Cardiff where the town, it’s neighbouring towns and the South Wales valleys were being destroyed by the Thatcher administration. The critic and painter, William Feaver dubbed Crowley quite rightly, ‘the Canaletto of urban deprivation’ on account of these works.

Flower Paintings

Hurt and pain are in the paintings that followed too in that this was the eighties and Margaret Thatcher not only declared that there was no such thing as community but illustrated such views by systematically destroying them. The once ebullient convention of splendid bouquets, bunches and posies that shouted affluence in Dutch still lives are here drained of colour with moths floating mournfully like ash in the air of a post-industrial malaise.

Landscapes

After South Wales, Crowley and family move to a 300 year-old cottage in the Forest of Dean for a better quality of life. It was here that John Barrell’s book, The Dark Side of the Landscape: The rural poor in English painting 1740-1840, an innovative study published in 1980 of the changing attitudes towards the depiction of landscape in English painting during its ‘golden age’ from the mid-eighteenth century, had a profound effect on him. Thus, Crowley embarked on a set of work that looked at man’s varying effects and presence on the contemporary landscape. Again, invasion, though this time of a subtler kind despite the striking use of flat colour. His landscape paintings from the late 1990s onwards don’t make judgement on the changes in land use that are recorded in them – his focus was on a genre that had returned to the forefront in the work of younger artists using traditional media. ‘For a painter,’ Crowley commented, ‘landscape is a genre that is inescapable; you have to address it. In 2002 he was diagnosed with Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) in his right arm. The condition made the painstaking effort of his technique with impasto impossible to sustain. Painting became too painful and he stopped for six months. Morning (2002), derived from a view in Donegal, was one of his last works in this technique. It’s natural therefore that Crowley continued to concentrate his investigation on man’s impact on our landscapes but by now using a more spartan technique awash with a vibrant palette of powerful reds, swathes of pastel blue and a wide range of yellows and golds. Red is traditionally the colour of danger or excitement in art and life, but when Crowley was asked whether his use of it was connected with the ‘slaughter of the local landscape’, he replied that it did not – it marked out the cost of losing land to development as industry and towns spread to accommodate new ways of working in so-called enterprise zones. Change is connoted by how the reflection of a group of dwellings in water can appear as substantial as the buildings themselves when shadow, rather than light, shapes the view.

Recent Paintings

In Blue Drift and Red Drift, both from 2009, Crowley “attains optimum expression of his aesthetic”. The reflection in water of some houses in West Cork becomes an image of permanence, while the scene above the waterline has been cut from view. The reflections of clouds assumed to be passing beyond the frame puncture the monochromed ground with cameos of detail and texture that hover like the inversions of reality they are. Stability is threatened; when global warming raises tides and floods low-lying plains and islands, ‘normality’ becomes a fantasy. Yet it is also an image of outstanding assurance and optimism – the blocks, bricks and notional nylon that man imposes on the landscape become embedded and eventually slowly absorbed into their surroundings. Nature will win, albeit irradiated and other-worldly.

'''EXHIBITIONS One-man exhibitions'''

Selected Group Exhibitions
 * 1973 – Hoya Gallery, London
 * 1978 – Paintings and Drawings, Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic Art Gallery
 * 1979 – Ian Birksted Gallery, London
 * 1982 – Paintings and Drawings, AIR Gallery, London*
 * 1983 – Home Comforts, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford (touring to St Paul’s Gallery, Leeds, New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh, and Darlington Arts Centre)*
 * 1984 – Reflections, Riverside Studios, London
 * 1984 – Night Life: a new project, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
 * 1984 – Table Manners, Edward Totah Gallery, London, and Anne Berthoud Gallery, London
 * 1986 – Domestic Crisis, Totah-Stelling Gallery, New York
 * 1987 – In Living Memory, Orchard Gallery, Derry (touring to Crawford Municipal Gallery, Cork; Chapter, Cardiff; Arts Council Gallery, Belfast)*
 * 1989 – More paintings about speculating and flower arranging, Edward Totah Gallery, London
 * 1990 – Ballads and Folksongs: Paintings 1981-9. Howard Gardens Gallery, Cardiff*
 * 1991 – Somewhere Else, Edward Totah Gallery, London*
 * 1992 – Northern Seen: Graham Crowley, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland*
 * 1993 – Atkinson Gallery, Street, Somerset
 * 1995 – The Last Decade: paintings and drawings, Lamont Gallery, London
 * 1995 – Warrens Boat House, Castletownshend, Ireland
 * 1997 – Rineen, Lamont Gallery, London
 * 1998 – The Flower Show, Lamont Gallery, London*
 * 1999 – A Drift, Royal College of Art, London
 * 2001 – Familiar Ground, Beaux Arts, London*
 * 2002 – Are you serious?, Wolsey Art Gallery, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich*
 * 2003 – Beaux Arts, London*
 * 2005 – Beaux Arts, London*
 * 2006 – Paintings, Bay Art, Cardiff
 * 2006 – New Paintings, Beaux Arts, Bath
 * 2008 – West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland
 * 2014 – Graham Crowley – The Cross Gallery, Dublin
 * 2016 – Graham Crowley – Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich
 * 2016 – Graham Crowley – The Cross Gallery, Dublin

 Public collections
 * 1970 – Stowells Trophy
 * 1970-71, FBA Galleries, London
 * 1976, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1987, 1993, 2004, 2006, 2016 – John Moores Liverpool Exhibition, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool*
 * 1976 – Arts Council Collection 75/6 Exhibition, Hayward Gallery, London*
 * 1977, 1981, 1983, 1985 – Tolly Cobbold-Eastern Arts National Exhibition, Fitzwilliam Museum,Cambridge (touring to venues in Great Britain)*
 * 1977 – Graham Crowley, Christopher Hamer: Paintings, Arnolfini, Bristol
 * 1977 – A Free Hand, painting and sculpture recently acquired by the Arts Council of Great Britain, chosen by William Packer, Arts Council touring exhibition*
 * 1977 – Drawing in Action: an exhibition of contemporary drawings, Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull (touring to British venues)
 * 1978 – Roger Bates, Graham Crowley, Clyde Hopkins, Winchester School of Art
 * 1979 – Open Attitudes: new painting and sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford*
 * 1979 – Style in the 70s: a touring survey show of new painting and sculpture of the decade, presented by Artscribe, Arnolfini, Bristol (touring to Roundhouse Gallery, London, Hobson Gallery, Cambridge and other venues)*
 * 1980 – 7 Artists, Kettle’s Yard Gallery, Cambridge (touring to The Minories, Colchester)
 * 1981 – Contemporary Artists in Camden, Camden Arts Centre, London*
 * 1982 – South Bank Show, South London Art Gallery, London
 * 1982 – Graham Crowley, Tim Jones, Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool
 * 1982 – Hayward Annual 1982: British Drawing, Hayward Gallery, London*
 * 1982 – Four English Painters, Gemeindegalerie, Emmen, Switzerland*
 * 1982 – Biennale de Paris, Musée Moderne de la Ville de Paris*
 * 1983 – Stroke Line and Figure: paperworks by sixteen artists, Gimpel Fils, London*
 * 1983 – 53 83: Three decades of artists from inner London art schools, Royal Academy of Arts, London* 1983 – As of Now: Peter Moores Liverpool Project 7, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool*
 * 1984 – Playing Live, Loseby Gallery, Leicester*
 * 1983 – The Image as Catalyst: the younger generation of British figurative painters, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford*
 * 1983 – The Proper Study: contemporary figurative paintings from Britain, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi, India (touring to Jehangir Nicholson Museum of Modern Art, Bombay)*
 * 1985 – 10 Years at AIR: A Retrospective, AIR Gallery, London*
 * 1985 – Still Life, A New Life: contemporary approaches to a traditional theme, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, Preston (touring to Cartwright Hall, Bradford, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne, and other British venues)*
 * 1985 – Proud and Prejudiced, Twinings Gallery, New York
 * 1985 – Artists Against Apartheid, Royal Festival Hall, London
 * 1986 – Figures and Myths for the late Twentieth Century, Edward Totah Gallery, London
 * 1986 – Cityscape: the changing face of London, Arthur Andersen and Company, London
 * 1986 – No Place Like Home: the ordinary made extra-ordinary in sculpture, painting and photography, Cornerhouse, Manchester
 * 1987 – Edward Totah Gallery, London
 * 1987 – Comic Iconoclasm, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London (touring to Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin, Cornerhouse, Manchester, and European venues)*
 * 1987 – Critical Realism: Britain in the 1980s, Nottingham Castle Museum (touring to City Arts Centre, Edinburgh, Camden Arts Centre, London, and other British venues)*
 * 1987 – The Self Portrait: A Modern View, Artsite, Bath (touring to DLI Museum and Art Gallery, Durham, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull and other British venues)*
 * 1988 – Figuring out the 80s, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne*
 * 1988 – Cries and Whispers: new works for the British Council collection, British Council tour to international venues
 * 1988 – The New British Painting, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (touring to Chicago Public Library Cultural Center, Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee, and other USA venues)*
 * 1989 – Images of Paradise for Survival International, Harewood House, Leeds*
 * 1990, 1991, 1992 – Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London
 * 1990 – Print News, Oriel, Cardiff, and Chapter, Cardiff (touring to Welsh venues) 1991 – Art for Amnesty Auction, Bonhams, Montpelier Gallery, London*
 * 1991 – 10th Cleveland International Drawing Biennale, Cleveland Gallery and Dorman Museum, Middlesbrough (touring to Oriel, Clwyd, Collins Gallery, Glasgow, and other British venues)*
 * 1992 – Collector’s Choice, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery*
 * 1993 – Riverscape: four international artist residencies, River Tees, Cleveland, various venues*
 * 1994 – The First John Jones Open, John Jones Gallery, London
 * 1994 – Back to Basics: a major retrospective, Flowers East, London
 * 1996 – Arthur Andersen Art Exhibition, Arthur Andersen and Company, London
 * 1997 – Summer Show, Lamont Gallery, London
 * 1997 – Marking Presence, Artsway, Sway, Hampshire*
 * 1999 – The Flower Show: flowers in art in the 20th century, Terrace Gallery, Harewood House, Leeds* 2000 – Summer Show, Beaux Arts, London
 * 2000 – Order and Event: Landscape Now, Michael Richardson Contemporary Art/Art Space Gallery, London
 * 2000, 2001 – The Discerning Eye, Mall Galleries, London*
 * 2001 – London Underground, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, South Korea* 2001 – Summer 2001, Beaux Arts, London*
 * 2002 – Summer 2002, Beaux Arts, London*
 * 2002 – Jerwood Painting Prize, Jerwood Space, London, and Waterhall Gallery, Birmingham*
 * 2003 – Local Colour, King’s Lynn Arts Centre
 * 2004 – Graham Crowley, Ronnie Hughes and David Quinn, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland 2009 – Home Truths: artists’ images of where we live, Harewood House, Leeds
 * 2010 – Americanaire, 2 Man show with Colin Martin, The Cross Gallery, Dublin
 * 2012 – Scope Art Fair, Miami USA
 * 2014 – Reality – British Painting, The Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, Norwich
 * 2014 – The Summer Saloon, Lion + Lamb Gallery, London & The Look Out, Aldeburgh, Suffolk
 * 2014 – 25 Years of The Jerwood Drawing Competition, The Jerwood Space, Hastings, East Sussex
 * 2015 – Reality – British Painting, The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
 * 2015 – Anti-Social Realism, Charlie Smith (London), London
 * 2015 – Tutti Frutti, Turps Gallery, London
 * 2016 – The John Moores Painting Competition – The Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
 * 2016 – Various Species – Greystone Industries, Wickham Market
 * 2017 – Telling Tales – Collyer Bristow Gallery, London
 * 2017 – In Sense Of Place – Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda
 * 2017 – Public View – The Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool
 * 2017 – Seeing through drawing – Mandell’s Gallery, Norwich*
 * 2017 – A Table of Elements – Greystone Industries, Wickham Market
 * 2017 – Jackson’s Painting Prize 2017 – Second prize winner
 * 2017 – Charlie Smith, London – 2017 Anthology Prize, Shortlist & Exhibition

Arts Council Collection Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki, New Zealand Basildon Arts Trust, Essex British Council Castle Museum, Nottingham Contemporary Art Society Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Gray Art Gallery and Museum, Hartlepool Imperial War Museum Ipswich Museum Kettle’s Yard, University of Cambridge Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art Leeds Education Authority Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter Victoria and Albert Museum.

Public Art

1980 – Crowley submitted a proposal for the decoration of the vaulted ceilings of the escalator shafts at Holborn station. One of three finalists. None of the proposed entries from the three were taken up. 1981 – For the narrow curving staircase between the lower and first-floor galleries at the Institute of Contemporary Arts’ Regency headquarters in The Mall, Crowley made Performers, a temporary ‘startling construction… fabricated out of colourful sheets of “Correx”; [it] turns the ascent into a bewilderment of jutting shapes’, that echoed the King’s Cross building. The Pitt and Scott commission resulted from a competition to paint a mural on their warehouse adjacent to Kings Cross station, administered by the Public Art Development Trust (PADT) and once more supported by the Arts Council of Great Britain. Crowley combined travel and motion into the context for his successful proposal. It depicts the act of journeying as an occasion for delight. 1983 – At the Brompton Hospital he made The Birds, a visual scheme of silhouettes in bold primary colours using stove enameled aluminium, fastened to lateral rails above head height in the out-patients’ department. Crowley had won the commission in a competition organised by the PADT and had consulted patients and staff while preparing his design. The process was adapted for Four Seasons (1983), a relief mural for the newly built Chandler’s Ford public library in Hampshire, that used seasonal leaf forms cut from coloured metal. 1984 – Night Life, Crowley’s temporary mural in the ICA’s ground-floor gallery. The grainy broken black outlines around objects created the impression that the entire wall space was occupied by a huge drawing in charcoal. Backed by flat, unmodulated expanses of nocturnal blue and light shadowy grey, with the whiteness of paper showing through as highlights from the wall beneath. 1998 – Dorset West General Hospital, Dorchester, Dorset – The Breeze, landscape-inspired mural using stove enameled aluminium and marquetry.

Publications

GRAHAM CROWLEY by Martin Holman, large format, hardback, 124 pages with 23 illustrations and 61 colour plates. Graham Crowley (b.1950) became a painter in the early 1970s out of conviction for the validity of painting, at a time when artists of the ‘1968 generation’ were seeking to break the link with painting and its traditions. This book is the first to review the achievement of a highly regarded contemporary artist. Martin Holman’s engaging text surveys the artist’s entire career to date and is accompanied by colour reproductions of key works. “I believe that it is possible to make an art that is both entertaining and substantial. Theatre and cinema already accomplish this.”

I DON’T LIKE ART Studies in value and meaning by Graham Crowley. Hardback (numbered & signed edition of 200) and paperback. 114 pages with 35 colour illustrations. “I Don’t Like Art” is a collection of essays and interviews by Graham. Several of the texts are ‘artless’, in so much as they do not contain the word art. Graham considers the idea that to simply ‘like’ something in a critical context is banal. “Beautifully written, irresistible and devastatingly clear.” Professor Paul Greenhalgh, Director – Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts “The book is a terrific mix of the exemplary and the cogent.” William Feaver, painter and writer

Essays

Absent Friends and Foreign Bodies; The Sequence; Desire and Longing; The Blind Screwing the Blind; I Heart New York; A Form of Making; Still Light; At the Edges; Simon Ogden; Iain Andrews; Tinsel and Twinkle; A Sense of Places; Interview, Core Gallery; Precious Things; Contemporary Painting; Can’t get no Satisfaction.

1977 – Conversation Piece: Graham Crowley, Christopher Hamer, Arnolfini Review, Bristol, November–December 1984 – Alan Miller in conversation with Graham Crowley and Stephen Farthing, Alan Miller: selected paintings 1974-1984, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 1984 – Artist’s statement, The Image as Catalyst: the younger generation of British figurative painters, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 1986 – Interview, ‘Under the Shadow’, FIRES, London, 1 (summer 1986) 1987 – Artist’s statement, John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 15, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, Liverpool 1993 – Artist’s statement, Riverscape: four international artist residencies, River Trees, Cleveland, Cleveland Arts, Middlesbrough 1993 – Artist’s statement, John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 18, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 1995 – Preface, A walk to the Marshes: paintings by Julian Perry, Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London 1998 – ‘Artist’s Eye: Graham Crowley’, Art Review, November 2006 – Artist’s statement, John Moores Liverpool Exhibition 24, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool 2008 – Foreword, Precious Things: a selection of contemporary painting, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda, Ireland 2009 – Interview with John Reardon, ch-ch-ch-changes: interviews with artists who teach, Ridinghouse, London

Artist’s book and illustration editions 1983 – Cover drawing, Artscribe, 40 (April 1983) 1984 – Gogol’s The Overcoat: Drawings by G.N. Crowley, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1994 – Christopher Isherwood and Edward Upward, The Mortmere Stories, Enitharmon Press, London (limited edition) 1995 – Stuart Hood, Marquis de Sade for Beginners, Icon Books, London

One-man exhibition publications 1982 – Brandon Taylor, ‘Graham Crowley’s new painting’, Graham Crowley: paintings and drawings, AIR Gallery, London 1983 – Marco Livingstone, Graham Crowley: Home Comforts, Museum of Modern Art, Oxord 1984 – Martin Holman, Graham Crowley: Table Manners, Stephen Farthing: Humble Friends (exhibition guide), Edward Totah Gallery, London 1987 – William Feaver, ‘Foreword’, Graham Crowley: In Living Memory, Orchard Gallery, Derry 1991 – Graham Crowley: Somewhere Else, Edward Totah Gallery, London 1998 – Andrew Lambirth, Graham Crowley: The Flower Show, Lamont Gallery, London 2001 – Andrew Lambirth, Graham Crowley: Familiar Ground, Beaux Arts, London 2002 – Andrew Lambirth, ‘The Evolution of an Artist’, Graham Crowley: are you serious? Ipswich Borough Council 2002 – William Feaver, ‘New paintings’, Graham Crowley, Beaux Arts, London 2005 – John Slyce, ‘Sketches in Carberry: Graham Crowley’s Calligraphy in the landscape’, Graham Crowley, Beaux Arts, London

Selected books and publications 1978 – Ian Kirkwood, Graham Crowley: drawings and paintings (exhibition guide), Newcastle upon Tyne Polytechnic Art Gallery 1984 – Robert Ayers, Playing Live (exhibition catalogue), The Loseby Gallery, Leicester 1984 – Marco Livingstone, ‘Graham Crowley’, The Proper Study: Contemporary figurative paintings from Britain (exhibition catalogue), British Council, London 1987 – Sheena Wagstaff (ed.) Comic Iconoclasm (exhibition catalogue), Institute of Contemporary Arts, London 1987 – Brandon Taylor, ‘Critical Realism’, Critical Realism: Britain in the 1980s (exhibition catalogue), Nottingham Castle Museum 1988 – Teresa Gleadowe and Kim Winter (eds.) Cried and Whispers: new works for the British Council collection, British Council, London 1988 – Tony Godfrey, Figuring out the 80s (exhibition catalogue), Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne 1988 – Edward Lucie-Smith, Carolyn Cohen and Judith Higgins, The New British Painting, Phaidon Press, Oxford 1989 – Marco Livingstone, British figurative painters of the ’80s I, Kyoto Shoin International, Kyoto, Japan 1990 – Marco Livingstone, Pop Art: a continuing history, Thames and Hudson, London 1999 – Jane Sellars, The Flower Show: flowers in art and the 20th century (exhibition catalogue), Harewood Visual Arts, Leeds 2000 – Andrew Lambirth, Order and Event: Landscape Now (exhibition guide), Michael Richardson Contemporary Art/Art Space Gallery, London 2006 – Sara White Wilson, ‘Table Manners: Graham Crowley’ in Stephen Farthing (ed.) 1001 Paintings you must see before you die, Cassell, London

Selected articles and reviews (London is place of publication unless stated otherwise) ‘Gallery guide’, Observer, 3 June 1979 William Feaver, ‘The Seal of Approval’, Observer, 15 July 1979 Christine Newton, ‘Modern Art: New Problems, The educational programme at MOMA’, Oxford Art Journal, 3 (October 1979) William Feaver, ‘The Liverpool lottery’, Observer, 30 November 1980 William Feaver, ’81 for the road’, Observer, 12 April 1981 Richard Cork, ‘Inter-city dreamworld’, Evening Standard, 1 October 1981 William Feaver, ‘Evasive tactics’, Observer, 7 February 1982 John McEwen, ‘Dibbets, Crowley’, Art in America, New York, summer 1982 John Roberts, ‘Graham Crowley, AIR Gallery, London’, Aspects, 19 (summer 1982) William Feaver, ‘Peep-shows from Paris’, Observer, 12 December 1982 Richard Cork, ‘Bird cure at the Brompton’, Evening Standard, 17 February 1983 Paul V. Kopeček, ‘Tolly Cobbold-Eastern Arts’, Aspects, 23 (summer 1983) Marina Vaizey, ‘Picking up the pieces’, Sunday Times, 12 June 1983 Waldemar Januszczak, ‘A nasty shock for the still-life’, Guardian, 10 June 1983 William Feaver, ‘Boom and bust’, Observer, 12 June 1983 Robert Ayers, ‘Graham Crowley’, Artscribe, 40 (April 1983) John McEwen, ‘Influenced’, Spectator, 30 July 1983 John McEwen, ‘A brush with the young masters’, Sunday Times Magazine, 23 October 1983 Robert Ayers, ‘”As of Now” at the Walker Art Gallery…’ Artscribe, 45 (February–April 1984) William Feaver, ‘One True Faith’, Observer, 22 July 1984 Nigel Pillitt, ‘Graham Crowley: Nightlife’, City Limits, 22 July 1984 Tony Godfrey, ‘Graham Crowley and Stephen Farthing’, Art Monthly, November 1984 Adrian Lewis, ‘Graham Crowley and Stephen Farthing at Edward Totah’, Artscribe, 49 (November–December 1984) E.H., ‘Graham Crowley, Totah-Stelling’, ARTnews, New York, summer 1986 William Feaver, ‘Mutation in the meadow’, Observer, 1 February 1987 William Feaver, ‘Comic-strip heroes’, Observer, 19 July 1987 Marina Vaizey, ‘The British scene shows signs of life’, Sunday Times, 11 October 1987 William Packer, ‘An idiosyncratic look at the one-man-show’, Financial Times, 13 October 1987 Brandon Taylor, ‘Graham Crowley’, Arts Review, 23 October 1987 ‘First of a new generation’, Llandaff Gem, Wales, 21 November 1987 Judith Higgins, ‘Painted Dreams’, ARTnews, New York, February 1988 David Lee, ‘The state of modern art’, The Times, 16 June 1988 William Feaver, ‘London: Graham Crowley’, ARTnews, New York, March 1988 Marco Livingstone, ‘In Every Dream Home a Heartache’, Art & Design, IV, 9/10 (1988) William Feaver, Graham Crowley, Modern Painters, II, 3 (autumn 1989) William Feaver, ‘Women with gloves off’, Observer, 9 October 1989 William Feaver, ‘Sticks, stones and a few gems’, Observer, 9 June 1991 William Feaver, ‘If you go down to the woods today’, Observer Magazine, 1 September 1991 ‘Battlings with the elements for the sake of art in Teeside’, Darlington and Stockton Times, 2 May 1992 Alison Ferst, ‘Essex man’s artistic brush with Cleveland’, Evening Gazette, Hartlepool, 27 March 1992 William Feaver, ‘Congratulations to a blotter on the landscape’, Observer, 24 October 1993 John McEwen, ‘Death by Diary Milk’, Sunday Telegraph, 3 July 1994 ‘Lessons with Old Masters’, Hampstead and Highgate Express, 15 July 1994 Tim Hilton, ‘Some are more equal than others’, Independent on Sunday, 24 July 1994 Andrew Lambirth, ‘Graham Crowley’, Galleries, XIII, 1 (June 1995) Nicholas Usherwood, ‘Graham Crowley’, Modern Painters, X, 2 (summer 1997) William Feaver, ‘Emigrating to avoid your critics seems a little extreme’, Observer, 12 June 1997 John McEwen, ‘The poetic beauty of an unhinged gate’, Sunday Telegraph, 8 June 1997 John McEwen, ‘Remembering a Jekyll-and-Hyde’, Sunday Telegraph, 15 November 1998 Julian Perry, ‘Graham Crowley’, Galleries, XVIII, 9 (February 2001) Craig Burnett, ‘Graham Crowley’, Modern Painters, XIV, 1 (spring 2001) John McEwen, Painting is still not dead’, Sunday Telegraph, 19 May 2002 Rebecca Geldard, ‘Graham Crowley: Beaux Arts’, Time Out, 19 February 2003 Sue Hubbard, ‘Graham Crowley at Beaux Arts’, Independent, 14 March 2005 Vanessa Thorpe, ‘Low morale devastates art colleges’, Observer, 10 February 2008 Aidan Dunne, ‘Paintings to be seen in the flesh’, Irish Times, 1 October 2008 Carol Gilbert, ‘Graham Crowley speaks of his early determination to paint’, Southern Star, Skibbereen, Ireland, 7 February 2009

Links • Graham Crowley on the state of play for contemporary painting | A-N 03-2010 • City & Guilds of London Art School • Highlanes Gallery • West Cork Art Centre • Royal Hibernian Academy • Ashford Gallery • ZAP Zeitgeist Arts Projects

Zeitgeist Arts Projects was founded in 2012 by artists/curators, Rosalind Davis and Annabel Tilley and is based in ASC Studios, London. They create support systems to enable artists to realise their creative potential. Talks, seminars, art tours, peer critique, tutorials and workshops encourage artists to learn from other artists, thus engaging, thriving and raising their profiles. Guest artists for their programme included Graham Crowley.

“Putting diversity and practice at its centre, Zeitgeist Arts Projects answers a real and growing need for artists to gain valuable support and guidance, an affordable education, to be a part of an active professional, artist-led group, the opportunity to exhibit and a sense that they belong to a ‘community of practice’.” Graham Crowley, artist and former Professor of Painting at the Royal College of Art.

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