Victoria Crowe

Over the last thirty years Victoria Crowe, one of Scotland's leading painters, has established herself as a painter whose work is instantly recognizable. This book covers her full range - landscape, still lifes, portraits, self-portraits and interiors - but much of her work defies such precise categorization. She has been described as one of the most vital and original figurative painters currently at work in Scotland. An essay by art historian and critic Colin Bailey, sets her work in context. Then follows a chronological path through her life and work, told in her own highly individual words, but punctuated by the voices of critics. It concludes close in time to where it started, thus forming a cyclical link, a theme that runs as a constant thread throughout the work itself. This is a personal journey spanning over thirty years, in which life events are transmuted into painted images. Since the publication of the first edition of "Painted Insights" in 2001, Victoria Crowe has received an OBE for Services to Art. The Scottish landscape and the influence of Italy continue to be explored through regular exhibitions of her paintings. A visiting scholarship at St.
Catherine's College, Cambridge, resulted in a body of work concerned with plant imagery, called Plant Memory, which was exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy in October 2007. The Millennium exhibition, A Shepherd's Life, is being re-gathered and shown in association with the SNPG at The Fleming Collection, London, January to March 2009. This exhibition will include the tapestry Two Views, commissioned by his Grace the Duke of Buccleuch and woven at the Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, 2007/08. Concurrently there will be an overview exhibition covering Victoria's work at the Fine Art Society, London. It is planned that the Antique Collectors' Club will publish a new book on the artist's work in 2011.