Ring out the old.

 The lockdown feels like it lasted the whole of 2020, although I think it was short of that. I really have no idea. Nor do I have specific memories of anything which broke the monotony as each blank day followed the one before.

The past two or three months before Christmas were defined by endless sheets of official paperwork spreading across the lounge carpet nearest the computer and the phone, as I ploughed my way through the obstacles lining the route from Power of Attorney to funeral arrangements to Probate. That will be my abiding memory of 2020. I now move on.

I have spent recent lockdown time reorganising my artworks as they appear on the internet, even going so far as to link them with the places they depict to their location on Google maps. Looking at those maps, I was shocked at the changes which have taken place in just the last five years, but mostly at how the pandemic itself has caused several to be listed as “closed permanently”. I shall miss the Big Fish. There have also been personal closures of a different kind, and look now for changes yet to come.


All text, pros, poetry & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

Merry Christmas.

 

 

All photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 18. Epilogue.

 

Tonight’s sunset reminded me of the first oil painting I did, albeit that one was actually meant to be a sunrise. But the low sun and silhouetted purple clouds? Exactly the same.

Lots of things at present are invoking memories of the past. I think I’m really tired. And when I get tired, rather than resting, I start finding things to occupy my thoughts. Not that I’ve been short of things to do. The sequence of responsibilities from Power of Attorney, to managing care home costs, to organising a funeral, to applying for Probate in order to then execute a Last Will and Testament, all against the current backdrop of lockdowns and restricted movements, took their toll.

I have been attempting to write something from a personal perspective about this pandemic year, but to no avail. What is there to say about a life style of government-imposed rules, restrictions and lockdowns, interrupted by little other than trips to the grocery store?

I shall endeavour to rest my brain over the Christmas season.

 All text, pros, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

R. I. P. Shelley

 Just heard the sad news via Facebook. Quite a shock, even after all these years. One always assumes the people one was close to in the past, and had meaningful relationships with, are still out there somewhere, happy and healthy. Sometimes it's not so. She passed away September 2020. I don't know the cause, but the date corresponds to the covid epidemic. I hope there was no pain.

Shelley Burton was an important person to me during the 1980’s, even though we were never destined to be together for life. During the two and a half years in which we were happily “an item”, she was both muse and motivator. The reason I exhibited quite well in the Nottingham Opens during the 1980’s, and indeed almost made it on to the wall in a Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, was down to her.

 All text, pros, poetry & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

Magritte in mind.

 

 

 When Magritte said on one of his paintings "This is not a pipe". (Rough translation). He was right. It wasn't a pipe. It was a painting of a pipe.

All text, pros, poetry & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

A poem for the pandemic.

 

 

What day is it today?

How to make my time go by?

The street is filled with school yard silence

No vapour trails in the sky.


An updated version of this poem was included in my book "46 Contemporary Poems".

 All text, pros, poetry & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 17. End bit.

 

I had intended to write something today about the current and on-going Covid situation. Not necessarily from a personal perspective, but also a historical one. For example, more civilians have already died from this virus in the last 8 months than died in the whole of the Second World War. So they are telling us. Whether they died from Covid or Covid was simply present, is not known. There are questions to ask. There may not be answers.

But my creative mind is currently blank. Erased no doubt by this pandemic situation: A time when both everything and nothing seem to be happening at one and the same time. Like knowing the world is still going round but, from the comfort of the lockdown armchair and from behind the face mask, who can tell?

It will pass.


All text, pros, poetry & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

#portraitnovember 2020

 

A series of "fun" self-portraits in the style of various artists. Top to bottom: Warhol, Picasso, Modigliani, Magritte, Gauguin, Braque. Portrait November was a Twitter art challenge.

All artwork copyright Ian G Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 16. We are the virus.

 When I was in my short-trouser pre-teens, the black & white newspapers were full of people carrying banners. All adhered to the same mode of dress: Duffel coats, college scarves, beards, and pipes. The women could manage the pipe, but as a substitute for the beard they took to wearing outsized knee length woolly sweaters, always in black, and known in the UK as “Fisherman’s Jumpers”.

They were protesters, marching back and forth between a military base in Aldermaston and London in an effort to “Ban the Bomb”. Several amongst them would strum cheap guitars and banjos, accompanied by the occasional clarinet or trumpet, in a god-awful never-ending rendition of “O When the Saints”, which in turn probably gave rise to a form of music as horrific as the bomb itself: British Trad Jazz, performed by potbellied waistcoated men with a penchant for “real ale”, and probably equally guilty of Morris Dancing on their weekends off. But I digress.

Even as a child I was informed that, if the Russians launched a nuclear attack, (it was always “the Russians” in those days), we would have just 4 minutes before it struck us. The “4-minute warning” became a part of everyday conversation. More specifically, “If you had 4 minutes left to live, what would you do?” Teenagers older than me invariably answered “Have sex!” (Some chance of that in late 1950s Britain). I probably thought raiding the local shop of crème eggs and scoffing the lot a better option. Today we face an even bigger threat, but hopefully more than 4 minutes left before the grand finale, also known as the end of times.

I draw no distinction between Covid 19 and the 14 million tons of plastic on the ocean floor (not counting the surface); or the 98% of English and Welsh meadowlands, plus 50% of the remaining ancient woods, destroyed in my life time; or the currently raging forest fires in South America, California and Australia; or the million metric tons of ice melting every minute from the ice caps. I draw no distinction because “We” are the cause. Whether Covid was deliberate or an “innocent” result of unnecessary cross species contamination, the argument still holds. Instead of a gung-ho “Can we? Yes, we can!” we never ask “Should we?”

People talk about saving the planet. The planet is going be fine. It can change and evolve without us. It’s done it before. What they mean is “save us”, and that might not be possible. From Mother Earth’s perspective, “we” are the virus.

All text and artwork copyright Ian G Craig.

#printoctober

 

Three fairly simple card prints for this October Twitter hashtag.

All text, pros, poetry, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

Photography during the Covid epidemic.

 Above: Lockdown car park, Carrington, Nottingham.

 Above: Photographs from my early morning walks around the neighbourhood. 

All photography copyright ian gordon craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 15.

 

 Please.


All text, pros, poetry, photos & artwork,copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 14.

 

Eye test? Check.
Car serviced? Check
Flu jab? Check.
Loo rolls & hand sanitizer secret stash? Check.

Okay. Bring it on.

In all honesty I’ve pretty much remained in lock-down. Those times I have ventured forth for simple things like a local beer or coffee, getting told where to stand, where to sit, and being asked for contact details, just takes all the pleasure out of it. I understand the necessity, and I comply with the rules, but I don’t want to remember some of my favourite haunts that way. And I won’t.

Making sure I don’t become permanently bonded to either the sofa, the doorstep, the CD collection, the paintbrush, or the TV remote, during these months, my daily routine starts with a brisk stride around the block. It’s this which has reignited my love of photography. So, m-m-m-My Corona weeks ahead may well see me pursuing this one-time “hobby” a little more.

All text and photographs copyright ian gordon craig.

#paintseptember 2020

 

The idea for the nine squares format came from a piece I made a long time ago.

All text and artwork copyright Ian G Craig.

#drawingaugust 2020

 

Above top to bottom: Skegness Pier, Newstead Abbey, Lady Bay Bridge, Green Hut Cafe (Ollerton Roundabout), Clumber Park,  Big Fish restaurant (Ollerton Roundabout). Drawing August was a Twitter art challenge.

All text and artwork copyright Ian G Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 13. Summer in the City.

 Straw Trilby? – Check.
Face mask? – Check.
Reactor-light glasses? – Check.
Bus pass? – Check, although beneath my face mask disguise, its passport style photo is totally useless.

Today I decided on my first trip into town since lockdown began. It seems longer. Regardless of the virus, I no longer tend to browse shops. These days the word “browse” is officially defined as an internet activity, number 2 on the Cambridge Dictionary charts as such. People no longer browse in the real world.

The bus into the city centre deposited so much sanitizer onto my hands it would have facilitated a full shower. Shortly thereafter, just as that first dose managed total evaporation, the Art Gallery dispenser’s sticky deposit made for a generous top-up. And that’s when the identity requests began, with a curator like a border guard asking for my papers. Once upon a long ago, at various night club doors, it was “If you’re not wearing a tie, you’re not coming in”. Now, one is expected to provide contact details, “just in case”. Yeh right. I do appreciate and accept the need for all this. But for me, the simple joy of “going for a coffee” is fast being negated by what now feels like a form filling, tax return activity.

There are winners in this world of the Nouveau Normals. A few short years ago the bright blue Caffe Nero stores were very much the new kids on the block. Not so today. Wherever one walks in the city a veritable host of bright blue Deliveroo bicycles, carrying huge bright blue food boxes, dash, hover, and surge as they negotiate their narrow way through masked pedestrians. “Meals on Wheels” has become yet another term with a brand-new meaning for the 21st century.


All text copyright Ian G Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 12. Doorbells & Doorknobs.

 Today was teeth day, having completed five sides of a pre-visit questionnaire before attending, and remembering the instruction not to touch the doorbell on arrival as they would come out to receive me, hand sanitizers locked and loaded

There are no waiting rooms in the new normal. Once inside, I took up position on the hallway tiles designated spot for my temperature check, involving a strange Star Trek device which apparently gleans all the information it requires from shooting a beam of light two meters from my forehead. It informed me my temperature is slightly low, but it didn’t prevent me from being able to move on and into the treatment room; the one which never lives up to its name as there are never ever any treats.

Somewhere beneath all the hulking layers of protective plastic stood the dentist I’ve known since 1975, and her assistant. It was impossible to distinguish which was which, or to interpret what their masked voices were saying. They resembled dastardly scientists from a 1950s sci-fi movie, eager to strap me down and set to with the neatly arranged instruments close by. And what if it wasn’t my actual dentist at all? Bracing myself for whatever fate had in store, I mounted The Chair and opened wide…

Happily, my check-up was completed with efficiency and speed, (I have the best dentist), and I even remembered to exit without touching those doorknobs. Nevertheless, on arriving home I still considered immersing my entire body in a bath tub of hand sanitiser, just as a precaution you understand.

I don’t think I’m ready to risk the pub quite yet.

All text copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

#figurejuly 2020

 

 Figure July was a Twitter art challenge.

All artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

M-m-m-My Corona part 11, into the New Normal.

 Have you all got your cam-chat backdrops sorted out? No, not the screens on your cell phone or computer, but what you choose to strategically place behind you when you’re on camera. I think you need to, now we are entering the New Normal.

The default choice in England (can’t speak for the rest of the UK), would appear to be bookshelves. Especially for politicians. Every time I see an interview now on the T.V. they all have rows and rows of books lined up behind them. I can imagine them barking orders to their assistants: “Get me some books! Lots of them!” So, don’t choose books. It’s been done. Not to mention the fact, with HD pictures, people can easily read the titles of whatever it is you’re into. I think at least one politician got caught out with some reading matter regarded as dodgy.

Not sure what I’ll be choosing, if at all. The only webcam I have is one of those crazily wide-angle things on my laptop. In fact, it’s SO wide angle I have to practically scrub and tidy my entire house before I dare turn it on. But be sure you will be judged by your cam-chat backdrop, just as surely as you were once judged by the manner and style of your dress.

Something for you to be thinking about.

 All text, pros, poetry & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

#growjune 2020

 

 #GrowJune was a Twitter art challenge.

 All text, pros, poetry, photos & artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

#movemay 2020

#MoveMay was a Twitter art challenge.

 All artwork, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.