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. JACK CRABTREE
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"Where I Work" 1974
oil on board
30x40cm
"Colliers After Shift", 1976
ink on paper
27x34cm
"Poppies & Blue Background", 2002
oil on canvas
c.50x40cm(1&2=in private collections; 3=artist's collection)
Jack Crabtree was born in 1938 in Rochdale, Lancashire. From 1955 to 1957 he studied at Rochdale College of Art and from 1957 to 1959 at St.Martin College of Art in London; thereafter, 1959-61, he took another course at the Royal Academy School London. Since then he lived and worked in Wales for a number of years; later taking up an appointment at the Univesrity of Northern Ireland, but left after a while to settle in France.
In 1978 Margaret Richards of the Tribune wrote: "Crabtree is a social realist who works in a natural style that is neither didactic nor over-emphatic. Sometimes his imagery is exhiliarating, 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." (Jack Crabtree Face to Face, 1978, publ.SVR Essen & Welsh Arts Council Cardiff, p.12).
Jack Crabtree, a graduate from Saint Martins School of Art and the Royal Academy, was a lecturer at various art colleges and was Professor and Head of Fine Art at the University of Ulster 1984/86. To date Jack has had over 70 solo exhibitions, the most recent in Ireland were at the Kerlin and Rubicon Galleries in Dublin, The Ulster Museum and the Orchard Gallery in Derry. Jack's work can be found in many public collections, the Ulster Museum in Belfast, the Arts Council in Northern Ireland and the Arts Council in Ireland to name but a few.
Teaching Experience: 1961-66 teaching in Salford & Rochdale schools; 1966-74 lecturer at Newport College of Art; 1983-86 Professor of Fine Art at University of Ulster Belfast.
Awards: 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.
Commissions: 1971 Artist at Work murals on the theme of Owain Glyndwr for the Council Chambers at Plas Machynlleth, 1974/75 National Coalboard, a pictorial record of the changing face of the coalfields of South Wales;
Dealer: Albany Gallery, Cardiff
