Sue Crawford has spent the last 7 years building a body of work referencing topography and consciousness, and in 2023 spent time traveling to new mountains, in pursuit of new topographies.
The Testudo Series is the result of some of these experiences and one, found on a mountain trip through Northern Italy. Learning of the Latin word, Testudo, which means tortoise, as well as the name co-opted by the Roman Military, Testudo was used to describe a defensive tactic of butting shields together to thwart off projectiles, Crawford imagines a new, hybrid Testudo manifesting as new terrain, one in consideration of its protective intention.
To show this new topography, patterns are built in reference to interlocking plates of a tortoise shell, highlighting the strength that can come from linking with others, while considering how growth and resistance can play in these complex explorations of texture and color. Moving beyond the surface and skin, Crawford imagines these massive objects as transparent—for a moment—and considers their bodies and origins, their resiliency and vulnerability, and how everything, interlocked together, is inherent to existence.
Sue Crawford was born in 1976 in Santa Barbara, California, and grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting from Massachusetts College of Art in 1998 and lived between the US east and west coasts for years before moving to Baltimore in 2007, where she was introduced to the fields of painting restoration and conservation, processes that have informed her current art practice in technique, momentum, and material. Recent exhibitions include a solo show, Lines are Feelings Too, at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Baltimore, MD), and group shows at Pazo Fine Art (Kensington, MD), Towson University (Towson, MD), Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design (Milwaukee, Wisconsin), and Institute of Contemporary Art (Baltimore, MD), Crawford is a two-time Sondheim Semifinalist. She is represented by Pazo Fine Art in Kensington, MD.