A Nomadic Lifestyle

 

Christina Crews works across three sites: her small studio in Sevenoaks UK, her indoor/outdoor workshop in Nolay, France and the printmaking workshop at Algärden workshop and gallery in Western Sweden where she was invited as AIR in 2016 and now returns every year.

 

Shifting, a practice in motion.

 

Currently Christina is making Japanese woodblock prints, embracing the carbon neutrality, transportability and inherent beauty of the medium.

 

She is drawn to layered surfaces, colours that coalesce. Her works are formed through a careful balance of shape, colour, form, and material. Enjoying rather than controlling the flow of the ink on water, deliberately showing the wood grain there is always a quiet tension, a play between control and surrender.

 

Sometimes confusing shadow and line or softening borders to lose forms into a haze or vapour her work is understated, quiet and personal, offering the viewer a contemplative respite from our fast moving, digital world. She would associate her work with the Japanese concepts of Ma and Shibui which refers to an aesthetic sense of unobtrusive beauty that balances simplicity with complexity.

 

Her work has been exhibited in leading galleries including Linden Hall Studios, Grafik I Vast (Gothenburg) Bankside Gallery, Watts Gallery and Artist’s Village, Williamson Art gallery and Museum, The Mercer Art gallery, Harrogate. Her recent selections for Wells Contemporary, the New Light Prize Exhibition, the National Original Print Exhibition and the Fourish Award for Excellence in Printmaking speak to her ongoing relevance on the contemporary scene.