Alistair Crawford

Artist statement

From the very start I have been interested in drawing places, both landscape and architecture, the Spirit of Place. This interest has taken me on several travels to foreign lands. But I noticed early on that no matter how far you travel you can only ever find yourself. I did, however, try to portray the essence of places, in that Italy does not look like Wales, although this concept is rare in the history or art. In 2000 I returned to oil painting which I had abandoned in 1964 when I opted at art school to specialise in textile design, drawing and printmaking, (I still work with drawings, prints, photographs).

On my return to oil painting I concentrated on a depiction of the Welsh landscape and I ended up painting what exists outside my back and front doors, thus the Windy Hill and Horizon series. Then I noticed that what was happening in my brain was demanding more attention. While it was always the case that in order to distill the essence of a place, my picture could well end up a capriccio, some of my Wales were now looking remarkably like my early Scotland. Thus, post 2000, this current journey in the landscape, that is, my landscape, has became a much more emotional affair, where feeling, mood, mystery, is dictating more than the need to be accurate about place. Landscape has become a metaphor, for living; you may be looking at a specific place, or you may not, it is no longer important. Landscape, after all, is a human construct. Thus, from 2000 onwards I have been working on my 'Landscape Capriccios' set; the landscape of the mind.

Influences
Architecture/urban environment, history, landscape, cultural identity, travel, aesthetic and formal concerns, music, theatre and performance, film.

Processes and techniques
Oil painting, watercolour, drawing, etching, lithography, monoprinting, photography, writing.

Career path
Alistair Crawford HonRE RCA practises as a painter, printmaker and photographer and his work is exhibited internationally and is represented in public, corporate and private collections world wide. Born 1945 Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, studied Glasgow School of Art 1962-66, taught at the universities of Leeds and Coventry and since 1974 at University of Wales, Aberystwyth, where he introduced printmaking, photography, graphic design, book illustration and museum studies, becoming head of the new School of Art (1986-95) which he instigated along with the School of Art Gallery & Museum. In 1990 he became the first Professor of Art in the history of Wales. Numerous awards include Churchill Fellow in Photography as Art 1982, Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales Gold Medal in Fine Art 1985, invited Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society 1991, invited Academician of the Royal Cambrian Academy 1994, British School at Rome Balsdon Senior Fellow 1995-96, and their first Archive Research Fellow 1997-2000. He was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers in 2000 'in recognition of services to the art of printmaking'. As an art historian and critic he has contributed to over 120 books and publications in several languages, mainly on the history of photography, especially Italy, but also on graphic art and art in Wales, and curated several international exhibitions of photography shown throughout Britain and in Ireland, United Sates, Italy and Austria, the most recent was the retrospective for Magnum photographer Erich Lessing. Reportage Photography 1948-1973 for Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (2002). He is also a short story writer, contributing a column Brief Exposure to Inscape magazine since 1999 and reading his stories in various public performances of Brief Exposure.

Areas of work
Education
Curating
Exhibiting
Lecturing
Practice-based research
Private commissions

Selected Collections
Coats Inks (UK)
Frito-Lay Corporation, Dallas
Royal national Museum to Deep Sea Fishermen
Museum of Modern Art, Wales
National Museum of Wales, Cardiff
Continental Bank Collection, Chicago
Peninsular and Orient Line, London
British Council Collection, London
Greenberger and Kaufmann, Chicago
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth
United Airlines, Chicago
Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow
British School at Rome
Mazda Cars, UK
Carmarthen, Haverfordwest, Hove, Leicester, Newport, Norwich Art Galleries
Eton College, Windsor
The Getty Group, Chicago
Universities of Aberystwyth, Imperial College London, Leeds, Liverpool, Northampton, Swansea
Maritime museums of Aberdeen, Anstruther, Arbroath, Fleetwood, Great Yarmouth, Grimsby, Hull, Moray, Penzance
Contemporary Art Society for Wales
Morse- Diesel Engineering Company, Chicago
American Dairy Association, Chicago
International Minerals Corporation, Northbrook, Illinois
Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Champaign
Moore Stephens Accountants, Jersey
National Screen & Sound Archive of Wales