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Brian Crouch usually works on a relatively small and intimate scale, adapted more to close scrutiny and a one-to-one relationship with the work, avoiding the rhetoric often implied in the large scale statement.

Articles about BRIAN CROUCH

“…. In order to get where he is now, Brian Crouch has subjected himself and his work to rigorous re-examinations and revisions. Like any substantial artist he has gone through upheavals and changes by constantly questioning his activity. Over the years this has yielded an impressive output of paintings, constructions, collages and drawings; some of it ostensibly abstract, at other times more overtly referential, for example to the sea and coastal imagery. Since he has lived in Wales the landscape has clearly meant a great deal to him; paintings of great distinction have been products of walks in the Welsh hills. In his recent drawings and paintings of gardens he has discovered his most fertile source of imagery and given us visions of resonantly beautiful configurations of colour and line invested with all his past experience; a summary of his achievements”. Albert Irvin R.A., artist. (From the catalogue introduction to the exhibition ‘Landscapes and Gardens’ 1992)



“I still love making paintings and perhaps just as much, drawings (and recently, constructions). It’s a kind of need but that doesn’t make things any easier. You’ll know, in your own work, that there are times of maddening frustration and very often the feeling that things will never come right. There is always something beyond. Maybe that ‘something’ is to achieve the rare certainty of having made a work which exists beyond our own limitations and stands outside them. Like making a ‘presence’ which is not only independent of oneself but also objectively good—maybe better than one thought possible. So in that sense I am not interested in ‘self-expression’. I would like to be as objective and structural as possible in shaping and ordering my work. Does that seem strange, looking at the paintings which seem very free?
My ‘heroes’ are still as they were when were students, like lifelong friends but all for different reasons; Picasso, Matisse, Monet, Klee, Kandinsky, Mondrian. I have added others of course, de Kooning and David Smith in particular…… Why do I no longer paint completely abstract pictures? I certainly stand by some of the things I did and it was a marvellous analytical discipline. I suppose that what I like, or need now, is the tension (often an awkward and troublesome one!) between the ‘stuff’ of painting: colour, paint, placement and so on--- and image. If that turns out to be identifiable as based on garden or landscape, so be it. I hope that it is at once both elusive, subtle and strong….” From a letter to an artist friend, John Pelling. Brian Crouch 1992.



“ Memory. It is that element, always particular and personal, that allows the traditional norms to expand and breathe and continue to be relevent. For Brian Crouch, as for many contemporary painters trying to find an expressive means, it is the interpretation through memory that is the enduring challenge. Memory allows, indeed encourages us to be selective, to emphasize certain things above others; the feeling we have for a place or the mood it evokes rather than just its description. When you can no longer recall the detail it is the echo of something else that remains, and the feeling. So that ‘White Garden’ has more to do with the brightness of a sunlit garden rather than a view of named plant varieties. It also embodies the desire to use white and lighter colours after a run of paintings using a darker tonality. It becomes a balancing act between what is actual, such as the nature of foliage and what the artist is striving to show. It is the artist’s version of the truth. Brian Crouch often talks of creating a parallel place with dual allegiances, of painting as a thing in its own right but anchored in his response to the world he inhabits.

“Expressionist” is a term sometimes associated with the way Brian Crouch works. Over time and a long and vital history referring variously to artists such Donatello and Rembrandt, it has become a term in denial, its meaning subverted and misapplied. ‘From the letting it all hang out’ to the throwing away of the painter’s rule book. Nothing could be further from the mark, then or now. Brian Crouch regards the way in which he makes work as objective and ordered so for him the notion of unfettered ‘self-expression’ is an uneasy one. Neither can he see any connection between his work and the emotionally charged ‘angst’ of the Germanic tradition of Expressionism from Matthias Grunewald onwards. The procedure he uses in the making of work does however mirror more closely the American Abstract Expressionists he admires, at least in its early stages. After initial drawings in which he seeks out and rehearses the shapes and forms that interest him he will begin painting often in a freely improvisatory fashion. All that seemingly ad-hoc mark-making is actually hard fought for and based on sound aesthetics and experienced practice. From that first ‘chaos’ possibilities emerge, opportunities are seized upon and the dialogue between what is set and what is not continues throughout. The construction of the painting is paramount so he secures the underlying structure, and that gives him the freedom to manoeuvre in and around the canvas. He employs gestural mark-making often as an expressive foil to the more quite closely-knit passages. He is crucially aware of pace in a painting—and the need to allow marks their full expressive potential.
It might be truer to describe his work, as he does, as painterly. He clearly enjoys the physicality of paint and the myriad ways in which it can be used to effect different things, the slurp of thick oil that holds the brushstroke almost intact, the washes and drips of thinned paint, the dragging of nearly dry pigment or pastel over a textured surface to keep the echo of the underpainting alive. He uses knives to lay down and ‘carve’ thick areas of paint and to mix colour without submersing any of the constituents. Acrylic is use as the underlying medium. Oil and pastel are also used and anything else that will do the job to realise his ends, understanding and exploiting the various qualities of each.
Sarah Bradford, artist and writer (From the catalogue introduction to ‘Brian Crouch, “Home and Away”, recent paintings’ 2000).

(Other text-material drawn from the catalogue to ‘Brian Crouch, ‘Sea-signs’, a retrospective exhibition 2005.)

'Offset'

2005
40 x 24 cm

Autumn Path - 1

1998
76 x 51 cm

'Rococo'

2005
45 x 22cm

Autumn Path - 2

1998
76 x 61

Sea-sign - 2

2000
79 x 28 cm

'Finistere'

2003
91 x 76 cm

Sea-piece with rope and net

2000
79 x 34 cm

'Substance and Shadow'

1998
36 cms diameter