William Crozier was born in Glasgow in 1930 and studied at the Glasgow School of Art from 1949 to 1953. He then moved to London where he began exhibiting professionally at the ICA, the Serpentine and Bruton Galleries. In 1983 Crozier established a home and studio in Roaring Water Bay, Cork, and since then the Irish landscape has been a recurring theme in his work, alongside the still life. The vibrant, contrasting colours and startling energy of his work is in direct opposition to the romanticised rural idyll of a muted green Irish landscape. Crozier describes the landscape with acid yellows, glowing pinks and electric blues, often with a disregard for traditional perspective and an emphasis on structure and taut, formal compositions. Though it has been suggested that he uses colour to engineer the emotional intensity of his work, smaller black and white works on paper also sing with the same exuberance.
William Crozier was awarded the Premio Lissone in Milan in 1960, the position of Professor Emeritus at Winchester School of Art in 1987 and the Douglas Hyde Gold Medal for Painting in 1994. He was elected to Aosdána in 1992 and is an Honorary member of the Royal Hibernian Academy. He has exhibited widely throughout Europe, most recently at the Scottish Gallery, Edinburgh; Fenton Gallery, Cork; and Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin. Career retrospectives were held at the RHA Gallagher Gallery, Dublin and Crawford Municipal Gallery in Cork in 1990 and his work has been included in many group exhibitions focusing on the Irish landscape. Works by Crozier are held in private collections in Ireland and the UK, as well as in the national collections of Canada, Poland and Australia. William Crozier died in July 2011.
www.williamcrozier.com
Exhibitions with Taylor Galleries:2007 William Crozier
2004 William Crozier
1998 A Greater Garden
1991