JOHN CRAXTON

JOHN CRAXTON
 

JOHN CRAXTON (B. 1922)

Landscape, St David's Head, Pembrokeshire,
Wales, 1944
Pen, ink, pastel and gouache on paper
Signed and dated lower right
20.5 x 32.2cm

Craxton held his first main one-man exhibition
at the Leicester Galleries in 1944.

 

Between 1941 and 1945, before I went to Greece, I drew and occasionally painted many pictures of landscapes with shepherds or poets or
single figures. The landscapes were entirely imaginary; the shepherds were also invented - I had never seen a shepherd - but in addition to being projections of myself they derived from Blake and Palmer. They were my means of escape and a sort of self-projection. A shepherd is a lone figure, and so is a poet. I wanted to safeguard a world of private mystery, and I was drawn to the idea of bucolic calm as a kind of refuge.

Conditions are very important to the way in which art is made. By 1945, circumstances had changed with the end of the war, and I no longer needed this self-protective imagery. But in wartime I went to St David's Head, in Pembrokeshire, with Peter Watson and Graham Sutherland, in 1943. There were cloudless days and the land was reduced to basic elements of life: rocks, fig trees, gorse, the nearness of sea on all sides, essential sources of existence.'
John Craxton, Whitechapel Art Gallery Catalogue, John Craxton: Paintings and Drawings 1941-1966, 1967