About Harrison

Baltimore City
Harrison Crawford visualizes the abstract fantastical world of dieties and divinities and solidifies them on the canvas for his audience.Visually he is well known for his juxtaposition of the saccharine and satanic, personifying the invisible forces that guide human nature  In the same way, he works with ideas, pulling possibilities from a place of fantasy and employing an almost magical ability to create space for those ideas to be discussed and made practical. Seeking to be more than just the… more

Art on the Go with H. L. Crawford

-Process-based workshops and interactive projects for the students and faculty as an opportunity to develop practices for expressing or sharing their breakthroughs toward deeper human understanding. The purpose shifts from the end result being an example of implemented skill to more of a chance to have technical ability help make a full spectrum of thinking visible, in many mediums. Inspired by pedagogy like Reggio Emilia and Montessori, where learning a personal fluency of effective language is more broadly important than simply producing the perfect product,  my goal is to continue to cultivate channels of communication between the individual and their infinite capacity to create and comprehend.

-"Forming Our Fears"-
    We worked together to explore the fear that can be found in the unclear or unknown parts of the imagination. We exercised how to make these aspects a little less scary by bringing definition and form to these thoughts through the act of creating art and discussion.
    In many cases, we discuss concepts like limiting beliefs and theories like “social reproduction”, where 9 out of 10 times a child will achieve success within a scale of examples from their environment. Doing this while immersed in the creative process allows a better clarity of the contentions while connecting it with the practice at hand, forming a relationship. As the task progresses, so too can the participant with the subject that they’re working through, making it less ethereal and more defined and manageable. As the renderings near completion, we talk about how our imaginations have not only helped us form clear ideas of these limits and fears, but also given us a ritual that we can use to strengthen our control over such things governing our decisions.
    Finally, we work on rendering a dream or fantasy. Each participant worked on their own but as a group. We talked about places, creatures, life goals, careers, family, and superpowers openly and excitedly. We worked to challenge the reach of each other's dreams and make every page its own universe. We helped each person get from where they were to where they wanted by just manifesting the next steps with critical thinking and the implementation of imagination. As a group, we discussed how this isn’t a unique or special gift, but a method of thinking that could be refined, a strength that exercise and practice can achieve, as we had done with this activity.
    Children that started by saying they’ll never dream, saying they only have fears like death and shortcomings, ended up spending the most time and energy creating places bigger than they’ve ever known. That’s what I want to nurture and nourish, that ability to imagine entire worlds of solutions from nothing. The minds that, with just a spark, can ignite volcanoes. This workshop, although started for early education, has been quickly becoming an exciting and memorable way to learn more about how one’s depth of darkness can be a mirror of their capacity for light. For many, it’s also helped with believing that spectacular and wonderful things from this light can be achieved with practice.
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Drawing

This is a collection of my drawings, separate from the main narrative of my "Serenity Prayer" project. This kind of work does tend to come naturally to me but beginning my training at The Schuler have definitely opened up my form language with the medium quite a bit. I hope to use the robust details and eccentric themes of this aspect of my work in more residential and hospitality applications in the future.
  • Decomposers
    Decomposers
    11x14" ink on watercolor paper - What was just undefined swirls and blobs in earlier compositions is finally something defined, something I can define and use as a great tool. These hyenas, vultures, beetles, ants, millipedes, and snails all turn the dead and decomposing facets of myself into energy, into the soil I can grow from. The point of the examining and scanning isn't just to identify and suppress but to identify, examine, and be educated. Being able to activate these aspects of my personal ecosystem help me to grow through and with hard times instead of simply trying to pile on more experiences atop the "bad" or "yucky" ones.
  • But Everyone Knew Her as Nancy
    But Everyone Knew Her as Nancy
    11x14" watercolor on watercolor paper Featuring: peacock skull hyena jawbone child gorilla shoulder coffee based beadwork and leaf pattern I was truly about due for some work for the sake of it. This piece, as well as an ear and heart full of sound council, helped me to realize that I have to remember to focus on my passion...my need to manifest my experiences into a trail of aesthetic bread crumbs and a deloping rapport with human-ness tinged feels. I'm remembering that when I'm in the right vibe, when I'm fully in it and doing it because my relationship with it is flourishing, then I feel it in my whole body. My hands will sweat and my fingertips will corse with electricity. My lungs fill with tornadoes and my heart pumps lava. I can't forget that I have magic like this inside of me. I always need to remember to keep a space for the hurricanes I can manifest. I can't forget that juju like that will absolutely find it's way out.
  • The Poison of Righteousness
    The Poison of Righteousness
    11x17" ink on drafting paper 07-2017
  • Cuddle Monster
    Cuddle Monster
    11x14" ink and watercolor on watercolor paper - 05/2017
  • Combat Medics as Clerics
    Combat Medics as Clerics
    11x17" ink on paper-11/2014
  • Yummy
    Yummy
    16x20" ink and watercolor on watercolor paper- 02/2017 - The "fabulous" is backward so it reads correctly in reflections. I wanted to draw a positive representation of my "princess mode". Those times where I need things done the way that I want and everything is fine as long as it's exactly perfect. But this piece doesn't want to shy away from it, it wants to be empowered, even for a moment, by its concrete standards of excellence.
  • Starcrossed
    Starcrossed
    11x14 - ink and watercolor and ink on watercolor paper - 02/2016 - The Arabic says "last night I saw you in a dream, now I have no patience to stay awake." The Sanskrit is the mantra for the green Tara, represented with the blue lotus on the right
  • Courting Candied Cannibals
    Courting Candied Cannibals
    11x14" ink on watercolor paper - 02/2015 This is a positive rendering of a succubus, often referenced as a consumer of dreams. With this in mind I combined a variety of dream eating imagery with her to empower the character as a totem of sorts. She is as much a representation of my fear of wasting creative energy as much as she is an angel to help me utilize that inspiration properly. I made her as an attempt to begin wrangling up idle thoughts and lost dreams, as to help me recycle such juju. The baku, or dream eating spirit, is made of roses, each color with their own meaning from the Victorian language of flowers. Bakus are often used to consume nightmares, like the dream catchers, but the baku can be overused and begin consuming the dreams of the individual, as well. This necessary restraint is to illustrate how I struggle with either spending too much time trying to learn from and edit what's happened or looking far into the future and fretting over if I'm reaching for my capacity for greatness properly. Both ends of the spectrum tend to be egotistical energy sinks, but in understanding the ends I can work toward achieving a sort of balance in the middle. purple: enchantment burgundy: unconscious beauty orange: fascination pink: grace white: heart unacquainted with love
  • A Brumous Ballet
    A Brumous Ballet
    11x17 ink and watercolor on paper- 10/2014 - This is a rendering of a 4 tailed Japanese ghost dressed as an African warrior goddess of sudden change and hurricanes named Oya. I had started this piece as a goodbye, and it ended up becoming me having to say farewell to a web of expectations and connotations I had allowed to work its way into so much of my me, as well. I thought I was saying this to someone, and it ended up being a culmination of so many instances of me trying to say this to myself. I'm fortunate to have learned so much from how I render the human condition, but I don't need to do another from this part of my stomach again for a while.

Painting

This is a collection of my paintings from the past few years in order from most recent to oldest. Like with my other work, everything is rendered for a reason, every character and item in place for a purpose of progress. Each of these, as well as many others, have been like journal entries or art therapy worksheets more than simply a picture of a thing. Most of these were made and developed while live painting. I thought the deeply personal nature of the works would make myself and the participants uncomfortable, but quite the contrary. The viewer and I would often times be connected in finding a moment where a facet of the human experience isn’t so isolated, that we can actually feel connected because of it, and there are many others that can feel in the same colors.
  • An Emancipated Breath
    An Emancipated Breath
    24x36" oil on canvas - 04/2017
  • An Emancipated Breath: Writing
    An Emancipated Breath: Writing
  • Just For Today
    Just For Today
    3x4' - acrylic on canvas - 09/2016 -This painting, along with the accompanying writing, is confronting, or more so conversing with, the great dragon so many chase. It's been learning that it's a terrifying and terrific level of drive that has simply gotten sick. With nourishment, it can be pulled from, it can be something to build with. It can be power for and powered by the whole range of human-ness...or just gobble it all up into nothingness...also a thing.
  • Just For today: Writing
    Just For today: Writing
  • Oedipus Ordnance
    Oedipus Ordnance
    12-9-15 I’ve followed the singing of bent silver bells along so many stepping stones made of smoke that now I can’t seem to find my footing to take a step back. I can find many ways upward and away but few, if any toward… toward. Echoing in the chambers of my chest I hear the bones of fae cracking in the jaws of cackling hyenas and the roar of knocked over candles setting ablaze the curtains of the ballroom. I’m thankful my imagination loves the heat of the inferno, finding such pleasure in passion, but I do hope the smell of smoke doesn’t stick with the upholstery
  • Beezlebub's Bakery
    Beezlebub's Bakery
    18x36" acrylic on canvas 05/2016
  • Emotional Noogie
    Emotional Noogie
    18x36' - acrylic on canvas - 07/2015
  • #selfie
    #selfie
    24x36" - acrylic on canvas - 05/2015 -4 armed, potato powered, art bot with the Buddhist concept of "Sunyata" on his forehead and lyrics from Ibeya's "River". This space dragon has been teaching me that I'm 'allowed' to grow however seems best, that I can manifest whatever life I'd like, and that I don't need permission to dream and/or become a bigger or more grandiose fairytale of an entity.
  • My Sullied Diana
    My Sullied Diana
    36 x 48" acrylic on canvas - 09/2014
  • Parabola
    Parabola
    4x5" - acrylic and uv paint on board - 03/2014