A commercial artist, painter, muralist, printmaker, scenic designer, and stained-glass designer, Seth Crews was born in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and moved to Chicago as a young man and studied at the Art Institute. He then operated an advertising studio specializing in theater posters and doing magazine illustrations for "Red Book". In 1916, he moved to New York and worked again as a commercial artist and also as a scene designer including for the Winter Garden and Hippodrome. In 1917, he began portrait painting.

His wife, artist Anabel Buckham, was killed in an automobile in 1918, and Crews moved to New Mexico, living on his sister's ranch near Alamogordo. In 1925, he settled in El Paso, Texas and became known for his portraits and landscape lithographs and for his set designs for the Bowie High School. He also completed murals in El Paso for the St. Regis Hotel, and the YMCA. His studio was in the Cortez Hotel, but he also continued to visit New Mexico.

Source:
John and Deborah Powers, "Texas Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists"