Aircraft Plant 1945

Ralston Crawford made "Aircraft Plant" with oil on canvas, and the paint is smooth and flat. It’s like he’s collaging shapes together, but with paint! Imagine Crawford in the zone, pushing the paint around, simplifying, and refining those sharp edges. I can almost feel him responding to the challenge of capturing the essence of industrial forms in a really reductive way. The black lines shoot up like scaffolding, they dance across the canvas, but the hard edges and flat surfaces are like a stage set, minimal, stark and cool. Crawford’s got a thing for geometry, and it's like he’s translating architectural forms into pure abstract shapes. This feels connected to the Precisionist movement – those artists who were obsessed with machines and modern life, but Crawford brings something unique. He's in conversation with those guys, but he’s doing his own thing! For Crawford, painting is like thinking, and feeling. The process of making becomes a place of investigation for him. It's pretty wild, right?