Grace Crabtree is an artist based in Bridport, West Dorset, making paintings in the traditional techniques of egg tempera and buon fresco. Since graduating from the Ruskin School of Art in 2019, she has exhibited across the UK and attended artist residencies in France, Portugal, and Cyprus, and has recently completed the Turps Correspondence Course.
Grace’s debut solo show, Elemental Drift, was held at Bridport Arts Centre in 2024 following an Arts Council DYCP grant for ‘The Art of Fresco’, a studio and research project (2022-23). Most recently, she was selected as a winner of the Partnership Editions Open Call 2025 - her latest collection is Lithic Landscapes, available on the Partnership Editions website.
“My work is rooted in landscape and water, drawing out both geological and mythological narratives within my subjects. While beginning with observation, and spending time walking and drawing, the landscapes, waterscapes, and geological forms I paint can drift into abstraction – building up and removing layers; carving out channels and paths. I’m interested in the ‘personification’ of earth and water, and suggestions of an animate, shifting landscape are further enhanced by the painting materials. In the buon fresco technique, in particular, earth pigments and water react with the damp lime plaster surface, binding the image to its substrate in an almost alchemical transformation.” - Grace Crabtree, 2026
The Art of Fresco: an artist studio video
Watch Grace talking through the process of buon fresco, a medieval and Renaissance technique used for creating wall paintings in which the image becomes 'stone'.
The video features works from Grace's solo exhibition Elemental Drift, with new works in buon fresco and egg tempera, which was held at the Allsop Gallery, Bridport Arts Centre.