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Photograph from the exhibition |
Entering the exhibition space the viewer is confronted with
colour and is exiled to an evolving perspective and landscape which is set in
the white wall space of the ominous silence of an art exhibition on a quiet Wednesday
afternoon. The exhibition filters and engages with Craxton’s influences
which range from Picasso, Blake, Palmer and even Miro. Elements of the surreal
are entwined within the linear narratives which occasionally supplement Craxton’s
apparent goat fetish.
“I find it’s possible to feel a real person – real person,
real elements, real windows – real sun above all windows. In a life of reality
my imagination really works.” – John Craxton (Text found emblazoned across the
gallery space)
Craxton’s early work and landscapes appear to be reactions
to reality and its natural surroundings. The incorporation of natural elements enables
Craxton’s works to work as coordinated entities to figure a whole landscape
which exists emotionally and metaphorically but as literal with linear forms leading into our reality. This
world of bucolic mystery formed on concentrated observations of Craxton’s
surroundings creates a confrontation with the viewer as cubist traits
infiltrate works weighted with evolving brushstrokes reflecting a luminosity
burning with a changing landscape.
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John Craxton (1945) Red and Yellow Landscape, [Oil on board]
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A conversation and dialogue is generated with Craxton’s
close friends and influences which include Graham Sutherland, a link which is
made clear in Red and Yellow Landscape,
1945 – where Craxton appears to pay homage to Sutherland’s evocative use of
colour. Layered within Craxton’s structured surfaces and poetic motifs is the
presence of an underlying falsification within Craxton’s communication of
colour. The emotional intensity imprisons reality in suggestions and symbols to
fly off the canvas with the birds which frequent many of Craxton’s compositions
to fly into the edges of our vision and thoughts on transience.
There is a strong poeticism within works such as 3 Lithographs
from From the Poet’s eye, 1945. Not
purely because of their illustrative purposes in accompanying and accentuating
the power of the poems within the book, but because of Craxton’s poeticism of
line, colour and form. As you progress round the exhibition you see stepping
stone pieces and progression posting markers for Craxton’s movement and
influences.
The exhibition: A WORLD OF
PRIVATE MYSTERY: JOHN CRAXTON, RA (1922-2009), runs from Tuesday the 3rd
December 2013 to Monday 21st April 2014.
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