Judith Christensen, “View of Land, Vital Force and Metaphors in Southern California,” Visions, Summer 1991.

 “Although stylistically diverse, there is a fundamental affinity underlying the metaphorical connections apparent in the work of Holly Crawford and Patricia Patterson. Crawford confines her approach to a single concept; as a result her imagery approaches abstraction. …It is the exploration or our essential connectedness to the land that unites their respective endeavors.”

…

“Reversing the usual above-ground perspective, Crawford’s oil paintings and charcoal drawings go beneath the surface to reveal that which is normally concealed Diverse forms—a single tap root with multitudes of rootlets (Root XI), plumb napiform roots (Roots VI), tuberous roots (Roots X) and so one—populate Crawford’s subterranean world.

Crawford, like Patterson, alludes emphatically to our dependence on the land for sustenance by virtue of the number of vegetable-like forms—beets, turnips, potatoes, carrots—in her new paintings. The notion of life cycle, albeit narrowly defined than in Patterson’s work, is also central. In Roots VI marks designating small hair-like roots are scratched through the surface layer of paint, mimicking how a root pieces or an earthworm pushes through earth. Crawford presents these as living and growing, not static entities, part of the cyclical pattern of plant growth, death, vegetal decay, the earthworm’s ingestion/fertilization process, and again, regrowth.

Some roots appear better suited to one function than another. Bulbous beet-like roots (Roots VI) or the potato-like root (Roots II) are particularly well-adapted for food storage. Other roots reach deeply into the earth provide strong anchorage and firm support. The roots in Roots IV crisscross like a net, ready to capture the slightest bit of water percolating through the earth. Despite their diversity, there is a sense in all there images that they are reaching out in order to bring something (i.e., nourishment) in.

Allowing for the differences in media, Crawford’s paintings evoke a mood similar to Peter Alexander’s recent monotypes, in particular the ‘Barcelona’ and ‘Mar Vista’ series. There is a density to Crawford’s images in comparison to Alexander’s airier skyscapes. But, like Crawford’s roots inching their way through the earth, Alexander’s clouds propel themselves across an abstract space.”

Alexander, too seems moved by nature, although not in the same way as Paterson and Crawford. His dramatic representations of luminous and ethereal clouds evince a fascination with dramatic vistas and plays of light of color. Although exceedingly sensual, his monographs lack—perhaps deliberately—the metaphorical content inherent to Crawford’s paintings.

While Alexander gazed upward and outward in awe, content to admire nature, Paterson and Crawford delve. Their imagery explores our relationship to nature, how we are rooted or grounded in the earth, both literally, in terms of our dependence on it for food, and figuratively, in terms of how it can enrich our understanding.  Pondering the universal life cycle, or the ways in which adaptations in nature (e.g. different types of roots) enhance diversity of function, can provide a useful perspective on our personal circumstances and decisions.

Both Patterson and Crawford choose subject matter that could easily dissolve into triteness or sentimentality. Given the popularization of the notion of ‘finding one’s roots.’ Crawford’s exploration of this single notion further risks conceptual cliché. Likewise, Patterson’s use of domestic material could collapse in to mawkish genre scenes. Yet both artists avoid these pitfalls; thanks to its metaphorical force, their work succeeds in engaging us intellectually.” 

Josef Woodward, “Women’s Works, Diversity of outlook and style are the main connective tissue in five artist ‘Feminine Ascension’ exhibition, Art/Entertainment, Los Angles Times, July 23, 1992.

 (except of review)

“Organic and biological elements are the bases of the other painters in the show,  who show variations  on personalized themes.

     Crawford’s paints roots, literally. Roots amount to symbolically loaded subject, as unseen source of substance, and that which we long for and sometimes fetishize.

      Roots are also tangly, unsightly support systems that make the more celebrated above-ground manifestations of flowers and fruits.

       It is this secret plant life that Crawford plays off, creating brooding portraits that sit somewhere, visually, between abstraction and the mysterious realm of dirt.”

…

“In the end, the exhibition is impressive not because of the gender of those involved but because of their aesthetic focus and expressive élan. In this case, anyway, it pays to heed the axiom of looking at the art, not the artist.”

 

Peter Frank, “Kevin Boyle, Daniel Brice, Holly Crawford: Pick of the Week,” LA Weekly, December 14-20, 1990, 141.

(except)

“Holly Crawford’s reliance on a dark palette in her oils serves to intensify not anxiety or gloom, but the metaphysical context in which she casts her very simple images. If Boyle paints the forests and Brice paints the trees, Crawford paints the roots, reddish-brown forms bristling with gnarled vitality. These roots bristle with symbolism was well, of anchoring and questing; they represent the force that ties a being to its source, and also the force in the being that makes it hunger, makes it yearn and survive and grow.”