TENIQUA CRAWFORD
(b. 1982, Johannesburg, South Africa)

Teniqua Clementine Crawford is inspired to capture the human form and its subtle language as an expression of our human nature and inner landscape. She paints and sculpts, observing the figure from life, while drawing from her inner world to combine elements of memory and imagination in her works.

Recently she has been creating abstracted figures in states of solitude, reflection, transition and emergence. The forms appear and disappear in transitions of light and shadow and imagined space. These works explore embodiment and the emergence of self.  Themes of permanence and impermanence; masculine and feminine energy; movement and stillness are a thread through the works.

Her exploration of the human form as a landscape is inspired by the natural world.  Growing up along South Africa’s wild coastline, memories of its dark rivers and caves, the silhouettes of mountains and horizons, are evoked in her paintings. Teniqua is drawn to work with the raw natural textures of charcoal, a muted palette of natural tones, and linen.  She works to preserve the artistic process and an unfinished quality as part of the work, exploring the interplay between presence and absence.  

Crawford received a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton and a Master of Fine Arts from Harvard University at the American Repertory Theatre and the Moscow Art Theatre Institute.

Her works are in private collections in the USA, Australia, the UK, Europe and South Africa.

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2023

Summer Exhibition, Everard Read, London

2021

Summer 2021, Sladmore Contemporary, London