Collaborations
Printmaking
Stillness by Victoria Crowe
Victoria has recently completed some prints in collaboration with the printmaking studios in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Her prints ‘Stillness’ and ‘Resilient Tree, Rising Moon’ were made with Alastair Clark, Studio Director of Edinburgh Printmakers. ‘Coral Bark Maple, Wolf Moon’ was printed with Scott Campbell of the Glasgow Print Studio.
Resilient Tree, Rising Moon by Victoria Crowe
Coral Bark Maple, Wolf Moon by Victoria Crowe
Tapestry
Naomi Richardson and Victoria Crowe. Photograph © Kenneth Gray
Dovecot studios
Richer Twilight, Venice tapestry. Photograph © Dovecot Studios
Dovecot have a long-standing creative relationship with Crowe, which began in 2007 with the tapestry Two Views commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch. Dovecot weavers and the artist have worked on significant projects including an iconic 40-metre tapestry for The Leathersellers’ Company, London, and Large Tree Group, which was woven entirely with undyed wool. Their most recent collaboration in 2019 was a new tapestry, Twilight, Venice, inspired by Crowe’s Venetian paintings.
The making of Richer Twilight, Venice at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh, 2019. Photograph © Dovecot Studios
The Leathersellers’ Tapestry
The Leathersellers’ Tapestry film © Dovecot Studios and The Edinburgh Film Company
Large Tree Group tapestry at Dovecot Studios, Edinburgh. Photography © Kenneth Gray
music
Winterreise: a parallel journey
A conversation about a musical collaboration between Crowe, Matthew Rose and Gary Matthewman took place during 2016, in which it was proposed that Winterreise would be performed juxtaposed with a film of Crowe’s winter paintings.
Winterreise: A Parallel Journey was performed at Snape Maltings, near Aldeburgh, and at the Wigmore Hall in early 2017. Victoria describes the experience as transformative. The paintings used in the film, which was made by Victoria’s son-in-law Kenneth Gray, were carefully chosen from her oeuvre of the past twenty years to speak to the changing moods of Schubert’s music and Wilhelm Müller’s poetry. It is never illustrative; Victoria says she drew on her own experiences of winter and of loss to create a parallel narrative. It was a true collaboration in which music, words and images were all integral to the experience. The images, towering 20 feet behind the musicians at Snape Maltings, made the experience immersive.
The connection of her work to music feels almost instinctive. Like poetry, music is a way of exploring aspects of human experience which are hard to describe. Music can move us, throw us back into the past, lift our spirits in ways we don’t fully understand and can’t always articulate. Music can make an emotional connection, moving straight from surface to depth. It is, in its own way, a kind of abstraction.
Susan Mansfield, Victoria Crowe: 50 Years of Painting
Winterreise in rehearsal at Snape Maltings. Photograph © Kenneth Gray
Winterreise performance at Wigmore Hall, London. Photograph © Clive Barda