Sketches in Carbery: Graham Crowley's Calligraphy in the landscape

The change is remarkable. European ribbons of black macadam-laced with yellow and white and bounded on both sides by green-are the material metaphor of Irish modernization. It still can take a long hour to get to Cobh and the ferry from west Cork, particularly if you find yourself stuck behind a farm tractor, as you do, somewhere on the length of road between Clonakilty and Bandon. But in the main, the donkey carts are gone. Identities, landscapes, and material cultures everywhere are constantly being written and rewritten. West Cork, not unlike Manhattan, is ever poised to remind one of the constructed impermanence of all that surrounds. The residue of change, both the organic and that cultivated, accumulates in the terrain: from the majestic outcrops of volcanic shale that form the coastline to the proprietorial bliss of bungalows scattering extraneous pastels amidst thirty-two shades of green alongside the grey tribal ruins of O'Donovan and O'Drisceoil. Potatoes once rolled out of the fields to be plucked floating in the bay while horses swam to Rabbit Island to eat grasses no hare had sniffed. Moving north-by-northwest along older famine roads, one discovers entire valleys of roofless ruins left in the wake of hunger and ships sailing over and into the sun. Ireland and the Irish landscape have never stood still. In many respects, it is only today that the country begins to reap the revolutionary gains of its long struggled for independence. That the Irish landscape is strong enough to embrace the antinomies produced in the confluence of its pasts, presents and imagined futures is a fundamental part of the logic Graham Crowley's painting is predicated on.

West Cork brought me together with Graham and his work. We each operate and have existences, as such, in the London art world, but the actual spaces we hold in common have place names like Rineen Woods, Carrighilly, Ceim Hill, Toe Head, Castletownsend, Myross, Leap, Union Hall, and Glandore. This is a specific stretch of coast in the west of Ireland-County Cork between Clonakilty and Skibbereen. The quality of light on a day that is not 'soft'-as those who live with and in it refer to the rain-is magical. I've only seen the likes of it on Cape Cod in Massachusetts-in another town called Truro where Edward Hopper removed the westward side of his saltbox house so he could see the sun set over the water from his studio as he painted. It is a light that produces long autonomous raking shadows of the kind Graham Crowley constructs to become a landscape. Shadows and light, past and present, renewal, transformation, and independence-these are, for me, the subjects of Crowley's most recent painting. Like memory and forgetting, these are paired terms that not only rely on the existence of the other for their meaning, but also the tensions produced therein.

A catalogue essay can only ever suggest a context in which to receive and read an artist's work and practice. Materially, one might begin to look at these images while considering a tension that exists in the relationship between the painting of an object and that of an illusion. Shadows are wraith-like, shimmering elusive things. And yet, in Crowley's practice of painting they are given the same degree of physicality, or veracity as the objects that cast them. Luminosity, transparency-light as subject-matter-these values are an ideal entry into Crowley's new work and practice of painting for they reveal the subtle and precise economy of his mark and its very nature. Fluid, immediate and yet, in areas of import, austere-his highly suggestive calligraphy is more often than not subtractive and about the removal, or absence of a mark. For example, in The Stags, Crowley denies the line of the horizon leaving the great stand of rock off the coast to float in negative space. Similarly true of all this work, shadows most convincingly describe the surfaces over which they fall exactly when those surfaces are absent as when a roof of a farmhouse or bungalow is coaxed into existence because of this line or falling shadow and not because of any other. This is a reductive, though passionate painterly economy that has resonance as much, if not more so, in the memory of site and space than in direct observation.

Cutting-in light to mark a doorway, the luminosity of a body of water, or an incongruous although entirely apt satellite dish hung at the eave of a comparatively ancient dwelling-this is a formal device wielded in the service of a master. What galvanizes the would be merely emblematic and technical virtuosity in Crowley's newest paintings is the pleasure and enjoyment evident in his mark, facture, and brushwork. Graham Crowley here makes paintings, for perhaps even the first time, that harness his formal abilities in ways both familiar and unfamiliar to subject-matter that is his own. One's identity only ever comes together within a community. We each struggle to be recognised through the forms we inhabit-our bodies-and the forms we create-our work. Confirmation, when it comes, stems from within an intimate network of bodies, subjectivities, labour, and its product. This is what a community means in practice. What I am suggesting here is an allegorical potential in these paintings: the renewal of a practice of painting is mirrored in a landscape of renewal and transformation; a newfound independence from a catalogue of calculated options is struck and an artist is able to engage with materials, subject-matter, and a practice that is their own. A cultural space is created; a place to exist is made where one may belong.

Crowley has for long painted the places where he lives. The difference, here and now, may be he is more at home in the manner and practice of his painting of place. There is an Irish element to this work, but this can be easily overstated. A viewer could transpose the quiet, though no less celebratory aspect of these landscapes to any open space that has penetrated their innermost being and identity. Crowley's paintings are about being immersed in a cultural space while invaded by the smells, rain, climate, and light that quietly bombard our interior senses in the open air. Yes, this happens in Ireland and by the sea. However, the longer I am with Graham Crowley's landscapes, the less I am sure the uncanny inkling of familiarity I feel flows from the specificity of the places we share along the coast in west Cork. There are moments-only ever interior-when an individual and a landscape are no longer separate entities but one. The still of such moments is elusive and passes shadow-like before us in an instant. These are sometimes haltingly preserved in the that-has-been of a photograph. They are produced, to be sure, in the open air and floating perspectives of Graham Crowley's painted landscapes where, at long last, an Essex lad, motorbike riding petrol head, and father of Irish ancestry has constructed a practice in which the identity of the person and painter are one.

John Slyce, 2005

1950 Born, Romford Essex
1968 - 72 St. Martin's School of Art, London
1972 - 75 Royal College of Art, London MA (RCA)
1978 - 85 Visiting Lecturer, Royal College of Art (Painting), London
1982 - 83 Artist-in-Residence, Oxford University
1982 - 88 Member of the Fine Art Faculty, British School at Rome
1983 - 86 Lived and worked in London
1984 - 86 Visiting Lecturer, Goldsmith's College, London
1986 - 89 Senior Fellow in Painting; South Glamorgan Institute of Higher Education, Cardiff
1985 - 89 Member of the advisory board, ICA, London
1987 - 88 N.A.B. Fine Art Working Committee
1991 - 92 Riverscape International drawing residency, Cleveland County
1994 - 95 Artist in residence, Dulwich Picture Gallery, London
1995 - 96 Tutor, Drawing Studio, Royal College of Art, London
1996 - 98 Head of Fine Art, City and Guilds of London Art School, London
1998 to present Professor of Painting, Royal College of Art, London

ONE MAN EXHIBITIONS

1982 Air Gallery, London
1983 Home Comforts, MOMA, Oxford and Touring
1984 Reflections, Riverside Studios, London
High Life, ICA, London
Table Manners, Edward Totah Gallery, London
Forum, Zurich Art Fair
1986 Domestic Crisis, Totah Gallery, New York
1987 In Living Memory, The Orchard Gallery, Derry and Touring
1991 Somewhere Else, Edward Totah Gallery, London
1992 Northern Seen, Northern Centre for Contemporary Art, Sunderland
1993 Millfield Gallery, Somerset
1995 The Last Decade, Lamont Gallery, London
Warrens Boat House, Eire
British Representative and prize winner, Cagnes-Sur-Mer,
International Festival of Painting, France
1997 Rineen, Lamont Gallery, London
1998 The Flower Show, Lamont Gallery, London
1999 A Drift, exhibition and inaugural lecture, Royal College of Art, London
2001 Familiar Ground, Beaux Arts, London
2002 Are you serious? Wolsey Art Gallery, Christchurch Mansion, Ipswich
2003 Beaux Arts, London

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

1976, 80, 82, 83, 85, 87, 93 John Moores, Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
1977, 81, 83, 85 Tolly Cobbold Eastern Arts Exhibition, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
1977 Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol
A Free Hand, Arts Council Touring Exhibition
Drawing in Action, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull and Touring
1979 Open Attitudes, MOMA, Oxford
1980 7 Artists, Kettles Yard Gallery, Cambridge and Touring
1981 Contemporary Artists in Camden, Camden Arts Centre, London
1982 South Bank Show, London
Hayward Annual, Hayward Gallery, London
Paris Biennale
4 British Painters, Lucerne, Switzerland and Bluecoat Gallery, Liverpool
1983 Stroke, Line and Figure, Gimpel Fils, London
1984 Art within Reach, Air Gallery, London and Touring
The Image as Catalyst, Ashmolean and Touring
Playing Live, Leicester Museum
CAS Contemporary Art Market, London
Drawing, Barbara Toll Gallery, New York
Venice Biennale, Anthony Reynolds Gallery
1985 The Proper Study, British Council, New Delhi
Proud and Prejudiced, Twinings Gallery, New York
Figure 1, Aberystwyth Arts Centre
Artists Against Apartheid, Royal Festival Hall, London
1986 Figures and Myths for the late twentieth Century, Edward Totah Gallery, London
No Place Like Home, Cornerhouse, Manchester
1987 Edward Totah Gallery, London
Self Portrait: A Modern View, Artsite, Bath and Touring
Critical Realism, Nottingham Castle Museum and Touring
1988 Figuring out the 80's, Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle
British Drawing, Thumb Gallery, London
The New British Painting, Cincinnati and Touring
Food, Odette Gilbert, London
1989 - 90 Real Life Stories, Cleveland Council's Collection on Loan, Spacex, Exeter
1990 Mixed Show, Gallery Dagmer, London
The New British Painting, Queens Museum, New York
Print News, Oriel & Chapter Galleries, Cardiff and Touring
The Brewhouse Open 1990, Taunton, 1st prize winner
Hunting Group Exhibition, London and Touring
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
1991 Art for Amnesty Auction, London
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London
Cleveland Drawing Biennale
1992 A Collector's Choice, Bristol City Art Gallery and Museum (curator: Keith Parkin)
Compendium Show, Spacex Gallery, Exeter
Silver Longboat Competition, Darlington
Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (invited) , London
Riverscape, Cleveland Art Gallery
Self Portrait Exhibition, Plymouth Art Gallery
1993 Riverscape Exhibition, Cleveland Gallery
Millfield Open (invited), Somerset
One of four judges for the 1993 (11th) Cleveland Drawing Biennale
1994 One of three judges for the 1994 Derwent Drawing Open, Sunderland
Moussorsky Project, Touring
John Jones / 1st London Open 1st prize winner
Back to Basics, Flowers East Gallery, London
British Library, London
1995 Keynote Speaker at West of England Conference on Arts Residencies
British Representative in Bangkok - European Union Exhibition (British Council)
Small is Beautiful - Food, Flowers East Gallery, London
1996 Small is Beautiful XIV - Sex, Flowers East Gallery, London
5 Artists in Arthur Anderson's, London
1997 Small is Beautiful XV - Death, Flowers East Gallery, London
Summer Show, Lamont Gallery, London
Hunting Group Art Prizes, London and touring
1998 Paintings of Modern Life, Guildford House Gallery, Guildford
Small is Beautiful XVI - Music, Flowers East Gallery, London
1999 The Flower Show, Harwood House, Leeds
2000 Summer Show, Beaux Arts, London
Order and Event: Landscape Now, Artspace, London
The Discerning Eye, The Mall Galleries, London
2001 ART2001, Beaux Arts, BDC, Islington, London
London Underground, Sungkok Art Museum, Seoul, Korea (British Council)
The Discerning Eye, The Mall Galleries, London
Small is Beautiful XIX, Flowers East Gallery, London
Summer 2001, Beaux Arts, London
20/21 British Art Fair, Beaux Arts, RCA, London
2002 ART2002, Beaux Arts, BDC, Islington, London
London Underground, Thai Pai, Taiwan
Small is Beautiful XX, Flowers East Gallery, London
Summer 2002, Beaux Arts, London
Finalist Jerwood Painting Prize, London and Birmingham
20/21 British Art Fair, Beaux Arts, Commonwealth Institute, London

PUBLIC COLLECTIONS

Imperial War Museum
Museum of Auckland, New Zealand
Arts Council of Great Britain
Ipswich Museum
Leicester Education Authority
Leeds Education Authority
Victoria and Albert Museum
British Council
Contemporary Arts Society
Kettles Yard, Cambridge
Castle Museum, Nottingham
Newcastle Polytechnic
Kirkleatham Museum, Redcar
Gray Art Gallery, Hartlepool
Ferens Art Gallery, Hull
Prince Albert Museum, Exeter

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1982 Hayward Annual, British Drawing
12th Paris Biennale (catalogue)

1983 Artscribe No.40 Graham Crowley by Robert Ayers
Home Comforts, (catalogue) Marco Livingstone, for MOMA, Oxford

1984 Playing Live, (catalogue) Robert Ayers
The image as Catalyst, (catalogue) Jaynie Anderson

1985 Still Life: A New Life, (catalogue) Vivienne Bennet
The Proper Study, British Council (catalogue) Marco Livingstone
Figure 1; (catalogue) Tony Godfrey

1987 In Living Memory, (catalogue) William Feaver
Crucial Realism, (catalogue) Brandon Taylor & Juliette Steyn
The Self Portrait, (catalogue) Edward Lucie-Smith
Comic Iconoclasm, (catalogue) ICA, Sheena Wagstaff
Modernism, Post-Modernism, Realism, Brandon Taylor
Art for Architecture, edited by D Petherbridge HMSO
Mute Accomplices; (catalogue) Stephen Farthing
Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, by Marco Livingstone

1988 Cries and Whispers, (catalogue) British Council, Lewis Biggs & Teresa Gleadowe
Painted Dreams, Art News, February 1988, Judith Higgins
Figuring Out the 80s, (catalogue) Tony Godfrey
The New British Painting, (catalogue) Cincinnati & Touring, Edward Lucie-Smith, Carolyn Cohen & Judith Higgins
Destruction, Art & Design
Art in the Age of Pluralism, Art & Design
British Art Now, Art & Design

1989 The New Romantics, Art & Design, January 1989
40 over 40, Art & Design
Modern Painters, review by William Feaver, Autumn 1989 Issue
British Figurative Painters of the 80s, Art Random, by Marco Livingstone

1990 Pop Art, by Marco Livingstone
Dictionary of British Art, Vol.6, Thames & Hudson
Painters and Sculptors, Francis Spalding

1991 Somewhere Else, (catalogue) Edward Totah Gallery

1993 Riverscape, (catalogue) Deanna Petherbridge

1996 Marking Presence, (catalogue) Artsway, Hampshire
Art 96 Feature, Art Review, January (article)
1997 Modern Painters, Review by Nicholas Usherwood, Summer Issue
1998 Art Collecting, The Independent, January (article)
The Flower Show, (catalogue) Lamont Gallery, text by Andrew Lambirth

1999 The Flower Show, Group Show, Harwood House (catalogue)
Art & Design, 100 Years at the Royal College of Art, by Christopher Frayling

2000 Contemporary Landscapes, CVA magazine, article by Keith Patrick
Graham Crowley, Modern Painters, article by Craig Burnett

2001 Familiar Ground, (catalogue) Beaux Arts, text by Andrew Lambirth
London Underground, (catalogue) Sungkok, Seoul, Korea

2002 Are you serious? (catalogue) text by Andrew Lambirth

2003 Beaux Arts (catalogue) text by William Feaver