Ford Crull

New York based artist Ford Crull explores the expressive power of personal and cultural symbols in a series of densely painted and vividly colored compositions. Crull uses identifiable images such as hearts, wings, crosses, and the human figure, as well as geometrical emblems and abstract forms whose meanings are less explicit. Words, in the form of cryptic, fleeting phrases, also animate Crull’s pictorial world. Crull employs a myriad of symbols, which variously imply a sexual unfolding, romantic suffering, occult wisdom, and transcendental release. These symbols coexist in a psychic atmosphere in which they overlap, dissolve, and reappear with a kind of furious insistence. There is a strong diaristic element in Crull’s work, with each canvas serving as a kind of painterly journal containing reflections and reveries. As meditations on emotional chaos, they enter into a world of competing impulses and simultaneous transmissions, seeking a resolution that is both cathartic and mysterious.

Crull’s paintings have been included in major exhibitions, including the 1989 Moscow exhibition, “Painting After the Death of Painting,” curated by Donald Kuspit. Other more recent solo exhibitions of his work include Carter Burden Gallery, New York, Abmeyer Wood Gallery, Seattle, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Alabama, Bund1919, Shanghai, China, and Arte 92, Milan, Italy, among others. 

Courtesy of the Artist