Artist reception for ArtSpace Gallery exhibit

“My color reduction woodcuts celebrate the magical moments of my life. I strive to capture the truth and beauty of my subjects. Some images deal with a particular feeling or emotion I have toward my immediate environment.”
— Cathie Crawford

Crawford earned a Bachelor in Fine Arts (1971) and a Bachelor in Art Education (1972) from The Ohio State University and a Master of Fine Arts (1987) from Bradley University in Peoria, IL. Since completing her MFA, she has concentrated on the color reduction woodcut.

Originally from New York City, she returned to Peoria in 2004 after living in Saudi Arabia and France for six years.

Her work has been included in more than 300 exhibitions, 30 solo exhibitions, more than 90 juried national shows and 25 international juried exhibitions.

Crawford has won 50 awards at both the national and regional level, five since 2021. Her prints have been exhibited in 29 states as well as Bulgaria, France, Poland, Saudi Arabia and the UK.

“Taking a break from my more figurative work with up to 21 runs thru the press, my recent work has been a gradual transformation to a more non-objective approach to the landscape. The beauty of water and the ever-changing colors of the landscape have been a constant source of inspiration throughout my 35-year printmaking career. My recent work is a convergence of color, line, shape, and texture in an ambiguous space with whispers of landscape. I have been striving to pack as much color as possible in the fewest runs thru the press using blended or split fount rolls of transparent inks. I print reductively from one piece of ¼” plywood as a printing matrix. I also use mylar stencils to work reductively within one shape at a time to extend the color possibilities, printing ‘pochoir.’

“While my art does not tend to be political, I have seen the bleaching of the coral reefs as a scuba diver. I have witnessed the disappearance of the beautiful glacier, La Mer de Glace in Chamonix, France, between my first visit in 1977 and my last visit in 2004. I am very worried about the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. The warming of our oceans will have a negative impact on all of us as well as future generations. I have been thinking a lot about climate change and our responsibility to the life of our planet the past two years. I feel Mother Earth is getting even, with this pandemic, for all of humanities abuses. It was inevitable that these realizations would influence my art.”