Don Crowley

Norman Kolpas

	DON CROWLEY

A childhood love of drawing, refined at the prestigious Art Center College of Design near Los Angeles, led Don Crowley to his first successful career as a top-notch commercial illustrator for more than 20 years in the New York area. “Then TV came along,” he says, “and one by one all the magazines that used illustrations began to disappear.”  Fortunately, Crowley had always painted in his spare time, and an invitation to show his works at a friend’s gallery in Arizona in 1973 led him to relocate his family to Tucson and devote himself full time to painting, particularly Paiute Indian families he came to know in the area. More than three decades later, Crowley now portrays the children and grandchildren of his earliest subjects. “I was really quite fortunate,” he says, “to be able to extend my career into something that will hopefully go on forever.”

Born: Redlands, CA, 1926.
Resides: Tucson, AZ.
Proudest accomplishment: I actually got to do what I wanted to do, which was to be an artist. Being as old as I am, I’m very pleased to be active and still looking forward to the next painting.
Advice to young artists: Never give up, and never put out anything that you don’t think is your very best work; if it sells, you’ll regret it.
Motto you have lived by over the years: Find out what it is you like to do and keep at it and try to do the best you possibly can.
Biggest misconception about an artist’s life: Especially if you work at home, people think that artists don’t actually work at all.

	PLUMES AND RIBBONS, OIL, 16 X 20

How has your work changed since starting out? If anything, my work has probably gotten a little more focused. I’m a detail artist, and I just have to live with the criticism of people who think my paintings look too much like photographs. It’s too late to change, and I wouldn’t want to anyway.
How has the art market changed? Everybody who ever picked up a brush has become a western artist, and galleries are now full of western art. Many of those artists are quite good, and many shouldn’t be there at all.
Other interests: I read quite extensively and listen to music—Big Band music and serious piano music by Vladimir Horowitz. I also listen to books on tape—right now, a very long biography of Winston Churchill.
Recent news: I’m very proud of my book, Desert Dreams, which was published in 2003 by Greenwich Workshop Press. Every October, I participate in the Cowboy Artists of America Exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, and I’m already working on my catalog piece for next year’s show. I’ve been in every Masters of the American West show at the Autry National Center in Los Angeles since it started. Settlers West Galleries here in Tucson has three group shows a year, and Trailside Galleries in Scottsdale has three or four, and I try to be in all of them.

He is represented by Settlers West Galleries, Tucson, AZ; Trailside Galleries, Scottsdale, AZ.