Barbara Anne Crawford was born on February 16, 1914 in New Castle, Pennsylvania to parents Frank H. Crawford and Anna F. Beal. She had two younger siblings, Hugh and Audrey. Hugh aspired to acting before the war. Moving to Washington State, he worked as a social worker for three decades while maintaining an active role in local theater groups. Audrey studied music before the war, worked on mapmaking for the War Department and had a long career as a nursery school teacher. Barbara married the Russian-born artist Sam Feinstein on April 1, 1942. When her husband entered the army, Crawford replaced him as an art teacher at the Chestnut Hill Academy, a private school in Philadelphia. She taught at Chestnut Hill for nearly 50 years and was honored in 2000 by having the school's art gallery named after her. She died on April 5, 2003.
Critical Analysis
By all accounts Crawford was a highly esteemed teacher during her long tenure at Chestnut Hill Academy. Aside from her Post Office mural in Bangor, Pennsylvania, the online record of her art work is scanty. She participated in the Second 1956 Exhibition of the Provincetown Art Association along with her husband Sam Feinstein. Feinstein was a juror for this show. Crawford was represented with her work "Bouquet". Crawford's 1941 Bangor mural was interesting in terms of its historical accuracy and the medium that she chose for her work. She visited Bangor, which was in the heart of what was then Pennsylvania's slate mining belt, the origin of blackboard slates for the entire country. During her visit she determined how the region had been settled and depicted in her mural the various ethnic groups that made up the local community. More strikingly, she determined that she would paint the mural on slate panels, four of which were donated by a local mine operator. These panels were shipped to her studio, where she completed the mural. It was then up to her to get them back to Bangor, the shipping expense coming out of her fee for the mural.
