Welcome
The art I have created during the previous forty years are my responses to the experiences I have had in life.
I have created art using the traditional subjects such as the still life, portraiture and the landscape. However, whether creating drawings, paintings,
prints and constructions or sculpture I have tried to connect the original idea for each art work with the means of conveying the idea.
The art even if non representational or an abstraction still retain an inherent idea and intent that is more than just the means. Each art object I create
contains an idea that exists beyond the object,
some ideas are obvious and some are not which may require further thought and contemplation of the viewer.
During my career I have travelled extensively to various countries and have seen many masterworks of art and culture. In my researches I have not only looked
at the objects that artists create but paid more attention to the social context, the thought process and life the artist lived.
The artist, Rembrandt and visiting his studio and house in Amsterdam in 1969, and the lives and art of Van Gogh and Vermeer are the earliest influences. The
drawings and
unfinished sculpture of Michelangelo represent to me his determination and struggle. The pastoral life of Monet, his
last great paintings when viewed as a panorama in an room sized arc demonstrates his will as an elderly man to continue to paint inspite of failing eyesight and arthritis.
Finally, the lives and work of Giacometti, Morandi, and Picasso and the Japanese artists Sotatsu and Korin, the famous gardens of Kyoto, and the art and culture
of Islam continue to inspire me.
–Dan Crawford, July 2010