Page 40 - Studio International - April 1974

machines all neatly drawn together into a well- Not-a-Train 1971 (Centre)
integrated configuration consisting, among Colour screenprint Burning Mining Town from the suite Vistas 1967
15¼ x 19 3/8 in. Lithograph and watercolour, 17 x 3o1 in
other fantasized objects, of a flying locomotive, Published by B. Jacobson Ltd., London Published by Gemini G.E.L., Los Angeles
a plane with a steamship fuselage, a vintage
(Bottom) Green Cockpit 1971
192o bi-winged plane on to which clipper ship Colour screenprint, 14½ x 16½ in.
sails have been grafted, and a turn-of-the- Published by the artist
century auto, motorless but well equipped with Printed by Advanced Graphics, London
excess headlights and surplus wheels. In such
exceptional instances, however, where focal
points of interest are scattered, each colour
patch remains 'an island of thought in itself',
to use Crutchfield's own expression. And in any
case, unity is reinforced by the clear but strange
light which so characteristically pervades his
compositions.
The delicacy of colour used by Crutchfield
and the subtlety of his meticulously precise line
together impart a light, airy and uplifting
quality to the forms appearing in all of his
compositions. His fine line is often treated in a
kind of dot-dash manner, nostalgically
recalling the characteristic wood-engraving
technique of nineteenth-century print
production. To avoid creating a sense of depth
and weight, he rarely resorts to cross-hatching.
Clipper Ship, from the Vistas suite, is one of the
few exceptions to the rule. There, the craggy
rock or iceberg (the ambiguity is intentional)
upon which the small clipper ship has
foundered is constructed of dense cross-
hatching and therefore visibly stands forward
against a dark and gloomy background sky, made
up of closely-grained parallel lines. In contrast,
the more typical treatment of the Clipper Ship
from the Americana suite shows little cross-
hatching, although the image itself is basically
the same. But even in the few exceptional
instances, traditional modelling is at a minimum
and any gradual interplay of light and dark,
either in drawing or in colour usage, is
conspicuously absent. Crutchfield prefers
purely linear designs and he employs localized
colour, and as a result his works sometimes
bring to mind qualities of early Quattrocento
Italian painting.
Certainly, the overt content of Crutchfield's
work is technology; his vehicle of expression
is the machine - and most often the transport
machine, lifted directly out of the past. Of
course his approach is neither that of a scientist
nor that of an engineer. For Crutchfield is a
poet, a poet of good humoured, inoffensive
satire, a sage of machine wit. He freely shifts
relationships in form, time, place, giving rise
to amusing and seemingly illogical statements;
he therefore speaks in a language with which
an amusement-seeking, play-orientated society
is fully acquainted. Undoubtedly, the objects
depicted in his works bring to mind the toys of a
child and he openly acknowledges that he finds
antique toys amusing. In his own childhood
he had few toys and instead was happily
granted free time to be alone to imagine and
invent. His accomplishments, however, do not
rest on a purely entertaining faculty; nor can
his works be interpreted merely as compensatory
elaborations of the memories of childhood

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