I have recently been looking at the watercolors of artist Keith Crown. The book, by Sheldon Reich, explores the history of Crown’s work. Crown was born in 1918 and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. He has had a long and productive career as an artist and is influenced greatly by the Midwest landscape. Crown also spent some time in New Mexico, which can be seen as having a profound effect on his imagery as well. I am drawn to his simplistic use of shapes and lines. Crown adopts a few recognizable stylizations to describe things like texture and pattern.
When looking at a thirty year span of work it becomes apparent how important the development of an individual visual language is to an artists body of work. His watercolors are sharp and colorful abstractions of rolling plains, roads, and tree lines, and rock formations. Most of the color plates in the book focus on his watercolors done in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s. I have just come upon this book, and have not explored it in depth yet, but found the images beautiful and honest in describing the world around us.
Image: Keth Crown “Storm Over Ranchos”, 1969