Details:
① Artwork:
Figures & Flowers #1
This watercolor painting exemplifies the artist's continued exploration of still life composition. Crawford arranges and paints “artificial flowers” in vases alongside fruit and various objects that she collects for their beauty. Her deliberate marks pool and bleed color across the surface of her works. About this process, Crawford remarks: "You can't control it—you can try, but watercolor does what it wants. In most mediums, paint stays where you put it. Watercolor complies with gravity and parallels the improvisation of jazz.” This comment evokes Crawford's internationally renowned work as a jazz singer. Throughout her decades-long career as an artist, Crawford has repeatedly revisited the conventions of still life composition. At the age of 78, the artist discovered renewed inspiration in her memories and the past; the walls of the artist's home studio, where this work was made, are layered with photographs, drawings and ephemera from her life. Crawford describes her studio's wall decor as “memories, remnants, trinkets, objects d'art and keys to the past.”
Specs:
③ Artist:
Stephanie Crawford creates her still life paintings in her home studio, a domestic space with layers of photographs, drawings and ephemera from her life on the walls. The artist’s deliberate brush marks pool and bleed color across the surface of the page; the improvisational quality of watercolor parallels her technique as a world-renowned jazz singer. Crawford frequently revists the conventions of still life painting, returning to a composition within a series and thereby exploring the generative possibilities of artmaking.