"Kieran Crowder's work is a profound response to the multiple instances of life-altering violence and mind-breaking cruelty which defined his youth: a time 'worse than war', as he has since come to characterise it. Unthinkable by any standards, this foundational period marks the beginning of a decades-long quest for peace and understanding: a state of being, free from conflict and pain, where the creation of art - on canvas and in daily life - is paramount.

"Kieran's long journey has produced some of the most distinctive painting around anywhere today, instantly recognisable to those in the know. Composed exclusively in oils, often hand-mixed, it is reliant on a boundary-pushing technical accomplishment that is uniquely his own: a way of handling pigment that echoes - and transforms - all manner of natural processes, from sedimentation/crystallisation to healing and beyond.

"Kieran was mentored early on by already-established artists like Nick Samsworth (MA Chelsea) and Miles Peter Richmond, loyal pupil of the great David Bomberg - whose concept of 'the spirit in the mass' is clearly at play in a typical Crowder painitng. This more philosophical dimension to his work was further developed via a first degree (University of York 1991) and subsequent PhD research with John Stezaker at London's Royal College of Art.

"Yet it was not from study, but only through the lived experience of his necessarily reconstructed life, that Kieran became able to produce his extraordinary work - paintings that bear unimpeachable witness to the murderousness that provoked them into existence, at the same time as they boldly and beautifully transcend it. As he has said elsewhere, 'there is no doubt this art saved my world. Fully seen, might it not help save yours as well?'.