Russell Crotty: Seascapes and Surf Works

California artist Russell Crotty’s ink and watercolor drawings in the form of hanging ‘globes,’ flat works on paper and books interpret his observations of natural and man-made phenomena. As his ink drawings of constellations and nighttime skies came out of his experience as an amateur astronomer, his visions of surf and shorelines are filtered through his experiences as a life-long surfer.

Two large-scale ‘globe’ drawings of Northern Californian coastal landscapes and a 10×20 foot drawing from 1990 composed of hundreds of tiny vignettes of a surfer and wave will anchor the exhibition both formally within the gallery space and historically within the artist’s oeuvre. The other significant aspect of Crotty’s practice, books of drawings and text, will form the third component of the show.

Russell Crotty was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area. He lived and worked in Malibu for many years and now divides his time between Southern and Northern California. He received his BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and his MFA from the University of California, Irvine. His work has been exhibited extensively internationally. In 2002 his surf drawings were included in the exhibition ‘Drawing Now: Eight Propositions for Contemporary Drawing’ presented by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His work has been collected by MoMA and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, SFMoMA, the San Francisco Fine Arts Museum’s Achenbach Foundation, the Centre Pompidou, Paris and many others.