Saul Ostrow, dean of visual arts and technologies and chair of painting at the Cleveland Institute of Art, stated in The ealer Plain Dealer Sunday Magazine...

“Perhaps what is most effective is Crombie's treatment of the paintings surface.  His brushwork and drawing bring the paintings to life.  His patterns of agitated brush marks are descriptive and in the same instance they give the paintings an abstract quality.  He captures psychologically his subject, be it nature or the back of a house.”