Bio | Statement

John Crabtree is a mixed media artist based in the UK with a brief dalliance at  Art College and  is basically self taught, working primarily with drawing and painting  influenced by indigenous artifacts and relics, especially the field note’ and diagrams of archeological sites depicting excavations and the process and the recording  of something discovered in different layers of history and time- (text and image )brought to light to inform and influence a creative response .His work has been shown in group shows in the U.K and Europe and is at present working on a series of  drawings abstracting the landscape into a somatic cartography of different layers  of experiences influenced by place  and land .

My work has its roots in pictographs, schematics, somagrams, hobo signs and outsider art .It is a philosophy of my own realizations and experience -a theology of the ordinary .  A formative memory I  remember as a child was in Primary School sitting next to a friend who was drawing a tree ,the branches and leaves he drew  were like dreadlocks as black as night.  To me it was  just the way he dug in  the pencil ,making the drawing with such fury and immediacy. That  moment was indelible and real  .I  source my inspiration from found objects,bits of plastic ,marks and stains   that I find and collect in the streets around where I live -a Kerb Kook’ of sorts  using  them as assemblies and prototypes that can generate a shape or line  .The composition is fundamental to me;  finding a motif’ -something that is intrinsic and integral that brings together different and often diverse elements .  I like certain qualities ,a clumsy line,bad painting , something incidental -a surprise or mistake that  can open up another dimension to the painting  ,an agency,a  curiosity that is playful ,naive and authentic .It takes the drawing to something beyond a conceptual structure -towards a direct experience .  An image ,motif,symbol can  be seen as an antenna, a sensor, a compression of idea and thought .  It can embody ,focus ,and transmit feeling into a locus of perception,a painting or drawing .A good drawing or painting  for me is one that is embodied- that has something within itself a charm and simplicity a sense of the organic; an emotion.