James Crowley

Artist’s Statement

As a self-taught native of the Carolinas, my painting style developed over a lifetime of study of European masters. The Renaissance through the Eighteenth Century is of particular importance to me: the Venetians - Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, Giorgione; the Florentines - Andrea Del Sarto, Pontormo, Bronzino; the Spaniards - Velazquez, Ribera; the Northern painters - Van Dyck, Holbein, Vigee Le Brun, Reynolds.

I have spent countless hours in museums across the country and Europe studying paintings deemed masterpieces by generations of scholars and connoisseurs. Besides investigating materials and techniques, I have always wondered what makes them so good? Or what constitutes good taste, not in a theoretical way, but visually? In other words, I have worked consistently to develop my eye. These questions continue to be the force that drives me with the hope that, over time, my work will become more sophisticated in some noticeable way.

After twenty-five years of painting portraits, I am represented in private and public collections from Boston, Massachusetts to Austin, Texas, including two NFL owners. I have also been commissioned by several colleges and universities, with the largest holder of my portraits being Georgetown University in Washington, currently at twenty-one. Converse University in Spartanburg, SC, has seven. Queens University in Charlotte has thirty-seven portrait drawings. In 2016, I was honored to receive a commission to paint a portrait of Brigadier General James M. Gavin, Commander 82nd Airborne Division, during the Normandy invasion on June 6, 1944. He was the youngest commanding general in the U.S. Army during World War II. The painting hangs in the Airborne Museum in Sainte-Mère-Église in Normandy.

In 1984, I was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to the inaugural Cultural Property Advisory Committee (Department of State). I served three terms, the third under President George H. W. Bush. The committee was created by implementing legislation in 1983 under Article 9 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export, and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The committee’s role is to advise the President on the U.S. response to requests for the protection of the endangered cultural patrimony of member states.