David Crawford is certainly his own man. He has never strayed far from his place of birth in eastern Oregon. He is himself an expression of the straightforward values Thomas Jefferson so admired in the rural man. And, like Jefferson, he has a bright mind, many talents, and a self-taught virtuosity with tools.

David leads a simplified life of his own choosing, growing vegetables, raising chickens (the henhouse is in fact an old age home for chickens), but he can't escape his self-described "constant itch" to create his art, another expression of the person.

The subject matter of most of his pieces is right underfoot or just out the window in the pasture. It is obvious that he knows them well, that he has in fact grown up with them. They also are straightforward, honest, deep, a bit quirky, and very often a lot of fun. As David says : "as the jester can speak truth to power, I see the comedy in my work as a bit of sugar to help sweeten what might otherwise be a bitter pill."

David works only in small edition bronzes because he wants them to be, in a sense, precious. Because he doesn't like to repeat himself he initially went into bronzes so a foundry could do the bulk of the repetitive work, but the quality wasn't up to his standards. Because of own his own sense of worth and his high standards for himself and because he wants to deliver the highest quality that he can (how refreshing), the man who doesn't like to repeat himself does every bit of the work himself, from the wax all the way through the casting and patina, in the backyard studio and foundry he built for himself.

To quote David Crawford; " I don't make art for artists, and I don't try to confuse anyone. Despite all the complexities of modern life, our emotions are as simple as ever. We laugh, we cry, we despair. We delight in things we've not seen before. These are the things I make art about."