Is It Possible to Define Art?
Carter Ratcliff of the Brooklyn Rails asked several people in the artworld what would their definition of art be in today’s contemporary art scene.
My response is here: Brooklyn Rail.
Author: Ford Crull
Painters on Painting
Painters on Painting is a site for artists to share their favorite art works. Each week, one artist chooses a piece that has gotten under their skin — be it as a simple attraction or as part of their pantheon of Greatness — to put words to that selection and parse the particulars of that work’s Distinctiveness.
Bartlett Lobby Installation
Bartlett Installation
June 2016
After a site survey and dialogue with the curators of the space, two Ford Crull paintings are installed in the lobby of The Bartlett in Washington DC.
Of Sight and Sound Performance
Ford Crull and Brandon Ross
The Stoop Series
2/27/18
Of sight and sound is an art/ music collaboration that challenges the accepted aspects of our human condition. By painting “blind” and listening to the improvised music, the visual part of the performance seeks to expand the possibilities of our other senses becoming more acute to create a visual (dialogue? ) that references our symbolic nature while leaving to chance the end result.
What we normally see may be just a reflection of something more real and profound in the quantum world . This performance attempts to qualify a more profound level of existence that is innate to us all but to which we rarely are in touch with.
The musicians are also forced ( in dialogue ) to improvise their truth as they are watching the painting come to fruition .
Ultimately the act invites the viewer to be more cognizant of a deeper reality than what they are normally conditioned to accept and expand their inner senses to manifest a more cogent perception of their true nature
See our documentary here:
Of Sight and Sound on Youtube
Monograms and Crossroads
Ford Crull, Friesen Gallery
Sun Valley, Idaho
March – April 2018
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In Conversation: Ford Crull and Carter Ratcliff
“The Figurative Work”
1974 – 2018
Cross Contemporary Art
July 20, 2018
Ober Gallery
Kent, CT
Oct 20th – Nov 18th, 2018
www.obergallery.com
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The Sky Is Watching
Georges Berges Gallery
Opening Reception Thurs. May 2, 2019
462 West Broadway, New York, NY 10012
on view thru May 25th, 2019
Paul Larsen Gallery
Ford Crull is a talented contemporary artist whose work captivates audiences with its vibrant energy and striking compositions. Known for his bold use of color and expressive brushstrokes, Crull’s paintings convey a sense of dynamism and emotional depth. His artistic style is characterized by abstract forms and fluid lines, which merge to create visually captivating narratives. Crull draws inspiration from various sources, including nature, music, and human emotion, resulting in artworks that evoke a range of feelings and provoke introspection. With a masterful command of technique and an intuitive understanding of composition, Ford Crull continues to push boundaries and leave an indelible mark on the art world with his captivating and thought-provoking creations.
Personal Statement
May 1, 2018
Painting, for me, is a way of developing one’s own iconography, a personal metaphorical shield.
What, then, is the process by which we rediscover the sublime? And re-achieve it? And discover those things inherent in us that renew our faith?
It is the journey of transformation, of self-discovery. We’re not going on a journey to save the world, but to save ourselves. And in so doing, we save the world. And any world is a living world if it’s alive and the thing is to bring it to life. And the way to bring it to life is to find your own case where your life is, and to be alive yourself.
We can take an active stance by digesting the stimulus around us and transforming it, giving it meaning. There is something then of the personal and universal in this process, more to relate to, and art becomes the means and or methods by which we transcend our environment and reach into the universal. It is a shared experience.
There are many roads to the same point. It seems increasingly necessary to point this out in our contemporary climate. All styles, dialectics, and methodologies are valid and even indispensable to a healthy artistic culture. The collective force of a multiplicity of views enhances and reinforces society, meanwhile providing a suitable environment for the artist journey. It nurtures a favorable climate which supplies all the ambition and inventiveness needed for aesthetic growth. And is not the self-expression of the soul a sacred act beyond the dialectics of a social-political criticism? Even Marx concludes “the deepest essence of man is the creative act.”
The benefits to man exist ultimately in a pool of shared ideas that are always there to draw upon. Over time each individual’s contribution reflects and enhances the culture and Spirit of Man, and gives art its meaning and substance.
A re-informed art is that with all those things it lost in the formalist decades, chief among them the belief that painting can be an avenue to spiritual renewal, a boulevard from the past to the future.
History has shown us what happens to art when one ideological mode is held supreme at the expense of all the others, and when aesthetic discrimination is judged to be superfluous in favor of the current political or social ideology. History also teaches us that over time it is not the political, sociological, or environmental distinctions that comprise great art; it is the magnitude of the artists’ vision transcending these manifestations of style and meeting on the plane of the universal.