[1] By 1900, her family had relocated to a homestead in Glen Riddle, Barraba, where she spent her time drawing people, cats, dogs, kookaburras, and even her father's prize winning bullock.
[2] Crowley studied at the Académie Colarossi and then took private lessons with Beaux-Arts de Paris portrait painter Louis Roger [fr].
With other participating artists including Rah Fizelle, Frank Hinder and Eleonore Lange, Balson and Crowley came together in the 1930s as leaders of the second phase of the modern movement in Australian art, developing the earlier ideas of Roland Wakelin, Roy De Maistre and others at the beginning of World War I.
[3] In 1954 with Balson's retirement impending, Crowley purchased a house in High Hill, Mittagong, in which she resided alongside her 227 George Street Studio.
In honour of the forerunners of the modern abstract movement, in 1966 the Art Gallery of New South Wales held an exhibition which included Crowley and her colleagues such as Balson, Fizelle and Hinder.
[7] Shortly before her 85th birthday, in 1975 the Art Gallery of New South Wales opened its doors to the first retrospective of Crowley, comprising 25 paintings and 12 drawings.
[7][1] Elena Taylor, the National Gallery of Australia's curator of Australian Painting and Sculpture, notes, "Crowley's long artistic journey over five decades from painter of traditional landscapes to avant-garde abstracts was extraordinary.
[10] The National Gallery of Australia held a solo exhibition of her work in December 2006 to May 2007 called Grace Crowley – Being Modern.
She left a small body of works,[1] three of which are held permanently in the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art in the University of Western Australia.