Ford Crull has exhibited his work in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions in London, Milan, New York, Washington, D.C., and Montgomery, Alabama.
Crull explores the expressive power of personal and cultural symbols in a series of densely painted and vividly colored compositions. He uses identifiable images such as hearts, wings, crosses and the human figure, as well as geometrical emblems and abstract forms whose meanings are less explicit. Words, in the form of cryptic, fleeting phrases, also animate Crull’s pictorial world.
Crull’s work has been praised as “poetic,” employing personal imagery and symbols from mythology and religion that reflect his inner world. These fantastic sequences of dreamlike images come to the surface of his paintings through a luminous, thickly applied background of color. Crull’s written words act as a kind of voice which emerges from and disappears back into the highly worked surface. The artist explains, “My particular interest in symbols is that I found that they have an intrinsic power, a drama and mystery that is fascinating for me because they influence and formulate our sensibilities – and that resonates deeply within me.”
