Columbia’s Crown Jewel

When you stop by PS:Gallery’s spring exhibit reception Saturday (6-9 p.m.), take time to take in the work of watercolor painter Keith Crown. A retrospective of the famous local artist’s paintings is on display there through June 26—peaking May 29 (also 6-9 p.m.) with a celebration of Crown’s 90th birthday.

Though widely considered a quintessential California landscape artist, the Iowa-born Crown has been a Columbian since 1983, when he retired from a 37-year career as a professor of painting and drawing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Reflecting his travels, Crown’s landscape images—marked by elements of abstraction—are culled from diverse scenes throughout the world: New Mexico deserts, Iowa fields, London rooftops, urban airports.

Crown’s work is included in the permanent collections of the University of Southern California Fisher Gallery, the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri, the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Ackland Museum in Chapel Hill, N.C., the Harwood Museum of Art in Taos, N.M., and the Albuquerque Museum in New Mexico. In 2003, The Watercolor USA Honor Society presented Crown with the Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award.