About the Object

The crisp lines of this abstract painting mask its source in a photograph of tattered and pasted advertisements in New York. Excerpts from a sketchbook from 1971 illuminate Crawford’s incredible visual memory and his approach to remembering color through writing, bringing the black and white photograph to life in its painted form.

Additional Information

The “pinkish violet” in this painting calls to mind his descriptions of the colors south of Tarbert, a village on the Isle of Harris in Scotland. On several pages in one of his sketchbooks, he wrote of the “pinkish violet” of the heather, which was “in (almost) full bloom,” and the Scottish thistles with its blossoms “also of a pinkish violet hue.” Further references to “peat black,” “green grass,” and the “near cobalt blue of the lochs and the sea” and the “cool grey” of the rocks correspond to the palette of Signs.