Water and the ever-changing colors of the landscape have been a constant source of inspiration throughout my printmaking career. Recent work is a convergence of color, line, shape and texture in an ambiguous space with whispers of landscape. I have witnessed the disappearance of a beautiful glacier, La Mer de Glace in Chamonix, France between my first visit in 1977 and my last in 2004. I have been thinking a lot about Climate Change and our responsibility to the life of our planet the past two years. I can’t help but think Mother Earth is getting even, with this pandemic, for all humanity’s abuses.
Born and raised in New York City, Cathie Crawford lived overseas six years in Saudi Arabia and France. She returned to Peoria, Illinois in 2004 from Grenoble, France. She has concentrated on the color reduction woodcut since earning an MFA degree in 1987 from Bradley University in Peoria where she had a one-person retrospective in December of 2016.
Her work has been included in more than three hundred exhibitions, thirty solo exhibitions, ninety juried national shows and twenty-five international juried exhibitions since completing a BFA from The Ohio State University in Columbus Ohio. Crawford has received forty-seven awards at both the national and regional level, four this past year. Her woodcuts have been exhibited in twenty-nine states as well as Bulgaria, France, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and the UK.
Crawford’s prints are included in private and corporate collections in eight countries including the International Print Center New York in New York City; The American University Museum in Washington DC; The Safeya Binzagr Darat in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; the Newark Public Library, Newark, New Jersey and the Peoria Riverfront Museum in Peoria, Illinois.