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Cul-de-sac
Jonathan Crow
JAN 10 - MAY 3
Will be on View in the
Marquee:
Woman and Five Cars, 2025, oil on canvas
Cowell Room Gallery
Overview
Born in Ohio in 1971, Jonathan Crow received his MFA in Filmmaking from the California Institute of the Arts in 2003. Before turning to painting, he spent many years working in the film industry—a background that continues to shape the cinematic atmosphere of his work.
In 2013, following a career shift, Crow returned to his early love of drawing. His series Veeptopus—portraits of U.S. Vice Presidents with octopuses on their heads—became an online sensation and was featured in BuzzFeed, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times.
Since 2018, Crow has focused primarily on oil painting, developing a body of work that explores the uncanny beauty and quiet tensions of Southern California suburbia. His paintings—at once humorous, unsettling, and deeply observed—draw inspiration from Edward Hopper, Richard Diebenkorn, and the films of David Lynch.
Crow’s work has been exhibited throughout the Bay Area and beyond, including Arc Gallery (San Francisco), the New Museum Los Gatos, Marin MOCA, TAG Gallery (Los Angeles), and the de Young Museum.
Crow is currently based in Santa Clara, California.
Artist Statement
When I was a child in the 1970s, my parents drove me from our home in rural Ohio to visit my grandparents in suburban California. I was struck by the mountains, the palm trees, the dusty colors of the hills—and especially the light. Those brief visits left a lasting impression, like an image burned onto film.
Nearly fifty years later, I paint those same Californian suburbs. Working in oil, I use their tidy streets and manicured yards as a stage to explore form, color, and the tension between the familiar and the strange. My background in film shapes how I compose each scene—like a still from a forgotten movie—charged with a quiet sense of story.
Through these ordinary landscapes, I create images that are at once amusing and unsettling, inviting reflection on race, gender, and what it means to live in this complicated country called America.