| Jack Crabtree | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1938 Rochdale, Lancashire England |
| Field | Painting Drawing |
| Patrons | National Coal Board |
Jack Crabtree is a contemporary English artist.
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Crabtree was born in 1938 in Rochdale, Lancashire, England. Between 1957 and 1959 he studied at St. Martin’s College of Art in London. Between 1959 and 1961 he undertook another course at the Royal Academy School in London.
After leaving the Royal Academy Crabtree lived and worked for a number of years in Rochdale and Salford and then at Newport in South Wales, before taking up an appointment at the University of Ulster in Belfast. He left after a while to settle in France.
To date Crabtree has had over 70 solo exhibitions, the most recent in Ireland at the Kerlin and Rubicon Galleries in Dublin, at The Ulster Museum and at the Orchard Gallery in Derry. His work can be found in many public collections, including the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Arts Council of Ireland and Newport Museum and Art Gallery[1]
Crabtree’s style has been described as follows by Margaret Richards of Tribune:
"Crabtree is a social realist who works in a natural style that is neither didactic nor over-emphatic. Sometimes his imagery is exhilarating, full of energetic figures, and sometimes sad and sensitive, showing old or weary men struggling to keep going. His vision is affectionate rather than romantic. He sees wild hillsides as a beautiful setting for one of the grimmest jobs facing any man. In his paintings, that beauty and that grimness are parts of an inter-locking reality that has stimulated his creative imagination; while in his graphics the spare outlines and meticulous observation of human nature has been likened to George Grosz's. The comparison is misleading, for Crabtree's sense of humor rarely turns into satire."[2]
1961-66: teaching in schools in the Salford and Rochdale area.
1966-74: lecturer at the College of Art in Newport.
1983-86: Professor of Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast.
1959/60: Kenyon's Foundation Rochdale Education Authority travelling bursary to France.
1974/75: Fellowship at the National Coal Board.
1975/76: Gregynog Arts Fellowship, University of Wales.
1976/77: First International Ruhr Arts Fellowship awarded by the German Federal Government.
1971: Artist at Work - murals on the theme of Owain Glyndwr for the Council Chambers at Plas Machynlleth.
1974/75: for the National Coal Board, a pictorial record of the changing face of the coalfields of South Wales.