My sketchbook pages are actually visual diaries.
"A chair is a difficult object. A skyscraper is almost easier. That is why Thomas Chippendale is famous". ( Mies van der Rohe).
"Our children will think of bananas as green or something teacher used to demonstrate condoms. Fine. Their children will think tigers and gorillas were mythical creatures like dragons which never truly existed. Not fine". (Ian Gordon Craig).
All text, pros, poetry, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.
"The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow,
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now."
(Byron).
When my Scottish grandmother retired, her fellow nurses bought her “The Complete Works of Byron”. I don’t know if it was Byron’s work she liked or his legend. When I got my hands on it many years later it looked like it had never been opened, and yet its spine still promptly fell apart in my hands. What really got me into Byron was a combination of Byron’s long poem “Manfred” and the Tchaikovsky symphony which it inspired.
Newstead Abbey carries a similar “deception”. Although the property was owned by the Byron family for many years, he only lived there for two, just six months of which were of a permanent nature. But because of that brief residence the place continues to be a favoured tourist attraction in the county. And, as a fellow Gordon, that’s good by me.
The statue here is often mistaken by visitors to be a devil. No. It is of course Pan, God of the Wild, companion of the nymphs, as well as a brief co-star appearance at the Gates of Dawn, in Wind in the Willows.
All text, pros, poetry, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.
