He studied at the following art colleges: After leaving the Royal Academy, Crabtree lived and worked for a number of years in Rochdale and Salford and then at Newport in South Wales, before taking up an appointment at the University of Ulster in Belfast.
Sometimes his imagery is exhilarating, full of energetic figures, and sometimes sad and sensitive, showing old or weary men struggling to keep going.
In his paintings, that beauty and that grimness are parts of an inter-locking reality that has stimulated his creative imagination; while in his graphics the spare outlines and meticulous observation of human nature has been likened to George Grosz's.
[1] 1978- : Senior Lecturer at the Gwent College of Further Education[1] 1983–86: Professor and Head of Fine Art at the University of Ulster, Belfast.
[1] Crabree's work is in several public collections, including: 1959/60: Kenyon's Foundation Rochdale Education Authority travelling bursary to France.