Carla Crawford graduated with degrees in Art Studio and Italian from the University of California, Davis, where she studied under the painter Wayne Thiebaud. While at the University of California, Carla spent a year in exchange at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Italy and an additional year studying at the Institute of Architecture in Venice. While in Italy, Carla became enamored with classical oil painting and after graduating she remained in the country for six months teaching art and art history and making master copies at the country’s national museums. She returned to California to pursue a degree in Art Education at San Francisco State University and taught art in public schools while studying at the Atelier School of Classical Realism in Oakland. Deciding to devote her full time efforts to drawing and painting in the classical tradition, Carla moved to New York to undertake a 3 year course of study in anatomy, portraiture and classical painting at the Grand Central Academy of Art and spent an additional year studying in the director, Jacob Collins’ private studio. From 2012-13 Carla spent the year in Spain making master copies at the Prado Museum.
Carla has been an artist-in-residence at the School of the Arts in San Francisco, the Hudson River Landscape Fellowship and at the Whiskeytown National Preserve in conjunction with the de Young Museum. She has received the Alfred Ross and Art Renewal Center Grants for Artistic Excellence and was given an Award of Exceptional Merit from the Portrait Society of America in 2016. She co-curated with Alessia Masi the Giorgio Morandi and Wayne Thiebaud show at the Morandi Museum in Bologna, Italy in 2011. Her work has been shown in galleries and museums across the country including at the Crocker Art Museum, the de Young Museum and the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in DC among others. She teaches painting and drawing in the graduate department at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and lives with her husband and sons in Sonoma County in California.