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catalog of rebecca crowell paintings in the exhibition Journeys, a two-person exhibition at thomas deans fine art, atlanta, february-march 2019

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Published by tdeansco, 2019-01-22 13:22:04

rebecca crowell: journeys

catalog of rebecca crowell paintings in the exhibition Journeys, a two-person exhibition at thomas deans fine art, atlanta, february-march 2019

Keywords: rebecca crowell,thomas deans fine art,oil and cold wax,paintings,journeys

Rebecca Crowell

Journeys

8 FEBRUARY-11 MARCH, 2019

690 Miami Circle NE #905, Atlanta, GA 30324 · www.thomasdeansfineart.com

This catalog was produced
in conjunction with:

Rebecca Crowell: Journeys

8 Februrary -11 March, 2019
Thomas Deans Fine Art
690 Miami Circle NE #905
Atlanta, GA 30324
tel. (404) 814-1811
www.thomasdeansfineart.com

Images © Rebecca Crowell
Compilation ©2019 Thomas Deans Fine Art
Catalog design: John Goodrich

This page:
Where the Light Comes In (detail)

oil and cold wax on panel, 14 x 11 in.

Front cover:
Steady On (detail)

oil and cold wax on panel, 14 x 11 in.

Rebecca Crowell

Journeys

8 FEBRUARY-11 MARCH, 2019



Undersong

oil and cold wax on panel, 14 x 11 in.

I paint in response to ancient and rugged places that I love, interpreting them intuitively

and abstractly through memory and emotion. The bogs and coast of County Mayo,
Ireland and the canyons of northern New Mexico are two significant places for me, but
I’m drawn to any landscape that is wild, rocky, and remote.

Certain human environments also move me: the ruins of stone buildings, old Spanish
houses with hidden courtyards, megalithic monuments. These ancient places seem to me
both deeply familiar and yet unknowable and mysterious. When I paint, I want to express
something of this strange duality—a feeling of nostalgia for something not yet experienced.

Contrasting qualities also contribute to the deep and complex whole of a place. These
include stillness and movement, strength and fragility, aging and timelessness, vastness
and intimacy. In my work I look for ways to express these dualities—strong value con-
trasts, variations in the texture and amount of detail, hard and soft edges.

My overall process expresses another duality: a sense of history and the present exist-
ing simultaneously. This happens as I build layers of paint and cold wax medium, then
scrape and dissolve away selected areas to reveal what is underneath, creating complex
surfaces.

As I finish a piece, I ask myself if what I’ve painted feels like a place to me. Not a place

in the sense of a particular location, but more like an essence or fragment of something

more universal. If not, I keep working. What I’m after is elusive, but somehow the

journey takes me there.

—Rebecca Crowell, 2019

Rebecca Crowell’s work is slow work that is the end result of many processes—

including looking, seeing and feeling—all spread out over time. “Many ideas and
images pass through my mind as I paint,” Crowell observes: “The passage of time
and aging, the accumulation of experience, the symbolic and visual aspects of natural
processes including stratification, collapse, compression: the ephemeral marks that
people leave behind.”

Crowell’s works are abstracted from nature: they are personal responses to the visual
forms, colors and atmospheres that have surrounded her in a variety of locations.
There are vestiges of representation in Rebecca Crowell’s work, but it is a type of
representation that has been refined and re-constituted through her artistic sensibility
and through her emotions.

Like other artists who have both abstracted the landscape and used it to feed their
souls—including Richard Diebenkorn and Agnes Martin—Crowell is extremely sen-
sitive to the nuances of time and place. She is the same person wherever she goes,
but her work changes when she travels to Sweden or Ireland. During a residency in
Ricklundgarden, Sweden, Crowell drank in the textures and colors of ice and snow,
rocks, lichen, and birch bark. In Ireland she studied crags, bogs, rocks and ocean
spray and let them come through her into a series of richly evocative semi-abstract
fields of color. Crowell’s “Atmospheric” series features veils and tones that evoke
specific places seen through the tendency of memory to obscure specific forms.

Rebecca Crowell’s work challenges us to travel with her and to share her sense-­ ​
memories. She invites us to stand with her and take in the world and its transcen-
dent beauties slowly. As an artist she does the hard work of finding the essences
that surround us so that we can stand in front of them, transfixed.

—John Seed, 2014

Reprinted with author’s permission

Secluded #2

oil and cold wax on panel, 14 x 11 in.

Above:
Landform #7

oil and cold wax on panel, 12 x 12 in.

Right:
Secluded #1

oil and cold wax on panel, 14 x 11 in.





Above:
Longing

oil and cold wax on panel, 42 x 42 in.

Left:
Steady On

oil and cold wax on panel, 14 x 11 in.

Layers Deep

oil and cold wax on panel, 36 x 28 in.

Then and Now

oil and cold wax on panel, 42 x 32 in.

Above:
Homeward

oil and cold wax on panel, 30 x 30 in.

Right:
Dwelling

oil and cold wax on panel, 48 x 36 in.



Walking the Edge

oil and cold wax on panel, 48 x 36 in.

In Shadow and LIght

oil and cold wax on panel, 42 x 32 in.

Since earning her MFA in painting from Arizona
State University in 1985, Rebecca Crowell has led
a life focused on painting. When she is not trav-
eling for teaching or for artist residencies (in such
places as Ireland, Spain, Italy, and New Zealand)
she works almost daily in her studio in rural
Wisconsin or in her winter studio in New Mexico.
She draws significant influence from these residen-
cies, as well as from her surroundings at home.

In 2015 Rebecca Crowell and fellow artist Jerry
McLaughlin founded Squeegee Press to bring
the use of cold wax medium to a wider audience
through books, videos, workshops, tools, and
artist mentoring. Their book, Cold Wax Medium:
Techniques, Concepts & Conversations (2017),
now in its second printing, is the first and only
comprehensive guide for artists and collectors
about this exciting medium. The book has been
the recipient of the 2018 Independent Publisher
Gold Medal and was named a finalist in the
International Book Awards.

Rebecca Crowell is known for her innovative
painting techniques involving cold wax medium
and is represented by a number of fine art gal-
leries in various locations including Dublin,
Ireland; Chicago, Illinois; Santa Fe, New Mexico;
Telluride, Colorado; and Atlanta, Georgia. Her
work is included in hundreds of private, public,
and corporate collections.

Opposite:
Quiet Light

oil and cold wax on panel, 30 x 22 in.

Back cover:
What is Hidden (detail)

oil and cold wax on panel, 48 x 36 in.



690 Miami Circle NE #905
Atlanta, GA 30324

tel. (404) 814-1811
www.thomasdeansfineart.com


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