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. The heart is among the most frequent of these symbols, combining love on both physical and spiritual levels. Crull’s written words act as a kind of voice which emerges from and disappears back into the highly worked surface. The scrawled, fragmentary phrases serve as kind of conscious counterpoint to the free flowing of gestural abstraction and symbolic forms. Color is the silent partner to language, infusing the welter of images with an enveloping emotional atmosphere, ranging from hot reds and golds to cool shimmering light blues and whites.
“Crull seems interested in spanning the gap between the aesthetic and and the spiritual. This is a rather suspect quest these days, not the least because so many “spiritual” artists seem unable to transcend sentimental cliches. Crull, however, offers something else- paintings that convey a genuine sense of mystery and wonder.” – Eleanor Heartney
Ford Crull was raised in Seattle, where he graduated from the University of Washington. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery, Dayton Art Institute, and the Brooklyn Museum. His paintings were included in the important 1989 Moscow exhibition, “Painting After the Death of Painting,” curated by Donald Kuspit. Recent exhibitions have included shows in New York, Shanghai, London, Milan, Sun Valley, and Seattle, .
