In late February 2025, I traveled to a small city in Lacoste, France, situated in a valley adjacent to the Luberon mountain range in Provence (about a 90 minute drive west from Marseille). This was a two-month artist residency, provided by the Savannah College of Art and Design for its alumni. The studios are medieval caves (the one I worked in was originally the village’s cistern). My proposal was to work exclusively in watercolor, pushing the scale of the work as large as my space would allow, while also producing many large to modest scale works.

Having never visited France prior to this residency, I hoped to divest any notion of exotic subject matter or superficial tropes and instead, cultivate a feeling of familiarity. The only way to achieve this was spending as much time as I could simply being out on morning and evening runs into the valley and through the villages and cities, as well as nocturnal walks absorbing the nuances specific to this place. All of this is occurring while being very much an outsider - which, if I’m honest - has been the way I’ve identified  myself throughout my life. Being removed from one’s subject often provides a vantage that those on the inside cannot entirely have.

My work has always sought to find peculiar moments that perpetually surround us, specifically when the light shifts in a way that transforms what we think we know about a place or thing. I consciously avoid having preconceived ideas about the beginning of an image as much as I possibly can. 

Some of this work remains at the Savannah College of Art and Design Lacoste campus, and some of the work is being shown at Couthure Arles; however, I am deeply grateful that the majority of the work made it through the Customs process and was able to be exhibited here at 502 Gallery.

- Keith Crowley