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Articles
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 (First Published Southwest Art July 2000)
Many viewers regard William Glen Crooks’ crystalline landscapes of Southern California and neighborhood portraits of San Diego as nostalgic. The artist, however, disagrees. He sees his spare paintings, which feature the region’s glaring and diffused light, not as nostalgic but tragic. Crooks tries to paint what is essential for him about human life: the lingering of “loss and regret.” Whether collectors are aware of these emotions or not, they seem to be as moved by them as the artist is. His spring show at SOMA Gallery in La Jolla, California, featured some twenty-five paintings and nearly sold out.
Over lunch at a Thai restaurant in La Jolla, the 48-year-old San Diego native talks about the narrative underpinning of his work. “In representational art there’s a narrative that runs under everything,” he says. “The stories of loss and regret are much more interesting for the defeated than for the victorious.” This vanquished quality, real or potential, is present in his paintings of coldly detached railroad crossings, nearly abandoned farms, and inner-city buildings one step ahead of the wrecking ball. His lean pictures both reveal and suggest loss as yet unconfronted.
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