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Welcome to my site
featuring oil paintings
Welcome to my site
featuring oil paintings
Welcome to my site, i'd like to introduce myself, my name is Stephen J Crawford as you can probably tell i'm from Yorkshire more specifically East Yorkshire before it was changed to Humberside (not that most Yorkshire folk recognised Humberside as a county) then back to East Yorkshire as it should have always been. The main purpose of creating this site is to showcase my art I hope you like what you see any questions or queries please do not hesitate to contact me by email thank you. I've put together a bit about myself and my art. I hope I haven't gone on too much.
Background
I started out as a painter and decorator working for my father, painting and decorating runs in the family as my father and grandfather were painter & decorators, I don't remember a time where me and my sister didn't have a brush in our hands at one time or another. Over the years I have had to turn my hands to quite a few different jobs from Painting & Decorating, security to gardening and sales along with a few other types of jobs over the years. I don't remember being very artistic as a child although my mother would probably disagree with on that point, In my teens I was more interested in playing the guitar as music was a great love in my life. It was a friend of mine that introduced me to oil painting (you know who you are) who was going to an art class once a week for a couple off hours run by the WEA, My friend kept asking me to go along and try it and I would come up with any excuse I could find to avoid going. After several months my friend said to me “if your not outside your house 9am on Friday morning i'll come and drag you out and take you there” at that point it seemed there was no point in excusing further as I know my friend would have done exactly that!, so no more protesting I made and went along, to my surprise I thoroughly enjoyed myself kept going and haven't looked back since. At this point I must recognise Julie as my tutor at the class without who I wouldn't have learned how to paint in oils. Five years ago my circumstances changed and I found I had a lot more time on my hands which I poured into painting in oils on canvas.
My Medium
I have been asked “why paint in Oils?”, my reply has always been “that's a good question”, one that is not easily answered. Painting in any other medium like watercolours or in acrylic has never had that appeal to me, whether that is because off being a painter & decorator or that oil paintings has always held a fascination with me i'm not quite sure, one thing I do know is that painting in oils on canvas seems to suit me. The history of oils and the versatility of the medium is what I love. My tutor Julie started me painting on canvas boards which are literally just that canvas wrapped on boards. The advantage is that the oil doesn't soak into the canvas as quickly as on stretched canvas. It wasn't long before I became accustomed to working on stretched canvas and have preferred it ever since. Cheap canvases were readily available but gradually rose in price over a short period of time, this moved me into making my own stretched canvases which I was shown how to make by my tutor. I tend to buy rolls of canvas (usually primed already) and stretcher bars, this worked out at about half the cost per canvas, recently the availability of primed canvas and the cost has led me to buying unprimed canvas and gesso primer separately. The processes of putting together the frame then stretching the canvas and now priming them before I can paint I find that I love the process and brings me closer to the creation of a piece of art.
Frames
As my paintings are not of standard size buying frames for them to fit can be quite expensive, so I started making my own frames starting with a painting I did for my dad and then a painting I did for my mother. There is no magic to what I do just with wood and plaster with a bunch of patience black gloss and gold spray, these have developed in there own way and display my art the way I would like it too be seen.
Themes of Art
As you will be able to see from my paintings buildings and architecture feature quite a lot in my pieces, this is no accident as I have always loved and admired old buildings with there ornate carvings and structural designs in the buildings in and around our cities and towns, especially where you have old with new. As most cities built on or around rivers there is a big history of seafaring, none more so than in Hull, Which is why barges,dredgers and ships feature also in my artwork, although I haven't forgotten the trawlers from Hull I just haven't got round to them yet. For a lot of these I like to paint in sepia as it seems to complement the history of the subject and its great fun to paint in sepia. Before lock-down I had painted a few animal portraits, this changed as lock-down became longer and I found myself finding a renewed love of animal portraits not in an environment setting but showing them off on their own, some more successful than others.
Work Evolved
I'm a great believer that we never stop learning and there is always room to improve, I think you can tell the difference between my earlier art than my recent creations, As I have improved with the depth of colours, shading and aspects that I have chosen and used and I feel that this has become stronger over the years. Hopefully will continue to keep developing as I go forwards. At this point I would talk about how I listen to my canvases or how a blank canvas will scream at me until I started to put oil on the surface but that's another story for another time, one thing I will say is that I have learned to allowing the paint to flow rather than bending it to my will.
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