Keith Crowley
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Artist Statement:
These paintings are based upon personal exploration of significant sites and influences from current and historical artistic lineage (painting, photography, and cinema). The bodies of water and their adjacent objects/land are places I explore for subjects, and here is where the activity of natural forms and artifice create visual relationships which directly affect the work.
The photographic prints are very useful as objects from which to carve images; the lens provides an immediate drawing tool. While this process relies heavily on a camera and has strong pictorial associations, I am not consciously interested in having a conversation with the history of the relationship between the photography and painting.
The pictorial space offered by a photograph has an austere nature with which I identify, and this static emotional quality helps me remain focused on a process that leans more toward painterly concerns (shifting formal elements) than figuration or narrative of some kind.
These paintings are primarily motivated by responses to visual sensations and a sense of place. Color relationships are primary factors within the work; anything else is secondary.
- Keith Crowley, Basin, 2010