Stopping Distance.

 

For those who don’t drive, the “stopping distance” is the space between the point one applies the brakes and the place one actually comes to a halt. If I hit the brakes at 30 m.p.h. on a dry surface my car will stop 75 feet (23 meters) down the road. Elsewhere in life I’ve always been convinced I can come to a dead stop. But I’m always proved wrong. Stopping is hard.The most effective way to apply the brakes is by applying, releasing, and applying them in short bursts. My 2016 was a little like that. Personal matters I thought had stopped preoccupying my mind long ago, lingered still. Dedicating myself to a strict regime of one-per-month paintings was like trying to apply the brakes on my thoughts in short bursts, hoping to bring them to a more effective halt.

 Today is the Winter Solstice. Tomorrow the daylight will last that little bit longer and the dark nights that little bit shorter.

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

Of Cats and Trees

 Of Cats and Trees.

 Before the days of social media, stories would occasionally turn up in the main news about a fire brigade having to rescue a cat from a tree. Surely just an urban legend, a “feel good” item bringing the broadcast to an end. As far as cats are concerned, trees are about as desirable as the nearest river bed. But put aside the thought someone might be stupid enough to call the emergency services for a cat, and consider how it got there.

Maybe the cat gets itself tempted into that tree. He hears those birds high above him, catches a glimpse of them fluttering amidst the leaves and, before he knows it, he’s up there. The birds of course don’t altogether flee from the tree. Why should they? It’s their tree. Instead they skip and settle to where the branches can’t support the cat’s weight. It’s a tease.

So now the cat can’t go any further up, but neither can he come back down. He’s confused, that’s all. Those shapes and sounds so appealing in their clarity from the ground, are now all mixed up inside his head with the rustling movement of leaves and the sunlight flickering between. To make matters worse, just as he’s trying to get a grip on his situation, someone below starts banging a spoon against the edge of a plate of processed horse meat, whilst a guy in uniform with a ladder creeps ever closer, addressing him as Pussy.

No way is that cat coming down now. Couldn’t if he tried. What started out as a frisky morning prowl around the neighbourhood has turned into a ball of confusion. In that moment, if you could speak Cat, you’d know his cries are not for “Help” but for everyone to just “Back off”. Sure, it’s risky up there in such a mesmeric situation, but it’s maybe more exciting than the realities of paws on terra firma. He has my sympathy.

Text copyright ian g craig

My Poetic Performance. (My first poetry reading).

My Poetic Performance.

 
“They look like a comfy pair of shoes”.
“Yes, and so clean”.
“And shiny”.
“I bet they’re new”.
“Do you know you can buy a pair just like those down the market for about ten pounds? It’s the brand you pay for you know”.

I am seated in a cave two or three floors below street level, in one of Nottingham’s most noted pubs for the performing arts, and I haven’t yet spoken one word. The cave itself, carved out of the sandstone, is a characteristic underground feature of many buildings in the city centre. Above me is the one-time Victorian Music Hall the Malt Cross, a venue I’ve variously sketched, dated, and drunk in, often watching local musicians perform. Somewhere in this pub’s files they have, at their request, copies of sketches I’ve made of the interior. But I’ve never performed here. I can’t remember the precise date I was last on a public stage anywhere, but I have done it, even going so far as to sing my own songs. Tonight, that’s about to change. A couple of weeks ago I saw a poster announcing the venue’s Spoken Word Open Mic Night and thought, “Why not?” So, I’m here to both test my mettle and the worth of the words I write.

I have always enjoyed writing, and taken it seriously. I have had some bits and pieces published in magazines. But I’ve never yet really put my words to the test. Painting is very different. I send the paintings out beyond my walls to be judged by others within their walls. In return I get a slip of paper which reads either “rejected” or “accepted”. No further explanation than that. Tonight, I am presenting my words to strangers for the first time, face to face. I put my name down at the door, number 14 on the list of tonight’s performers. If my words prove to be no good at least my shoes have been a big hit.

When I was a student in Liverpool, poets like Adrian Henri and Roger McGough were not yet widely known across the U.K. The Merseybeat groups of the sixties had all followed the Beatles south, to be replaced in the seventies by the Mersey Scene, predominantly one of poetry and improvised music. So, it was not uncommon to both sit alongside and experience such talent in the local pubs. I cannot pretend I was ever a member of that in-crowd, but it was an inspiring atmosphere for a young student to witness. Tonight reminds me a little of those days. The sandstone benches along these underground walls are rock hard, but the people are supportive, in good spirits, and raring to get started. Importantly, they are all listening attentively to each other’s works.

I’ve spent much of the day rehearsing out loud in my studio. I think, of the dozen or so acts which precede me, I must be on a par with a fair percentage of them. One notable exception being number 13, a youthful, passionate performance in rapid contemporary rhyme and without notes. Not an act I would have chosen to follow. Nevertheless, one pint into the evening, number 14 “Ian” is called to the front…

I am expected to read two poems. I'm happy to say both go down really well. The audience laugh with me at my brief introduction to “The Gift”, which relates how my years as a teacher was rewarded with a simple book token, before they then became totally involved with the poem’s pathos, catching them off guard.

 Similarly, the “four and twenty seagulls” and “balding braided doorman” of “Skeggie Day” elicit giggles of appreciation, before the poem’s sombre conclusion makes its mark. I like using this well-established literary device, mixing opposing emotions in the same piece. (“It’s getting better all the time. – It can’t get no worse”). I shall be using it again. Perhaps in this venue.

This night gave me the confidence to consider self-publishing a collection of my poems.

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

Nightclubbing in the 70s. Part 2.

Night Clubbing 2.

Tim would like nothing better in the whole world than for his life to go back to the way it was just one week ago. But instead, he’s stood beside us in a club he’s unfamiliar with, whilst some booze-for-brains lout is shouting in his face “Are you looking at me?”

Bringing him here was a dumb idea from the start. Three guys are never going to pull. We should have simply taken him to the pub, there to let him alternately drown his sorrows and pour his heart out over the fact his fiancé has said goodbye. Instead of which we brought him here, suited-up and stood like an out-of-place Top Shop dummy beside a noisy dance floor, his face vacant as someone whose thoughts are miles away in another city.

“Are you looking at me?!”

Tim wasn’t looking at anybody. But in late night Nottingham, “Looking at” is regarded as a serious offence. One punishable by Fists.

“Are you looking at me?!!”

Tim is now frozen on the spot. Now he really is looking. He can’t do anything else. In fact, he’s staring like a rabbit caught in the bulging red-faced glare of his drunken accuser. He wants to look away, he really does. But he can’t. He’s scared stiff fixated.

We take an arm each, almost lifting his rigid body away from the scene, offering abundant “Sorry mate” apologies as we go. We’ve both been in similar situations before and know the ropes. Tim hasn’t. I doubt he went to an all-boys school like us. I know for sure he can’t ever have lived in a place like Liverpool where I developed a sixth sense of how and when to avert one’s eyes, and how to walk home in the centre of the road because it offers an extra pavement width of sprinting distance if attacked.

Now the bouncers have turned up, wanting to know what the problem is. They never take sides. As far as they’re concerned, if there’s a fight to be had then everybody goes down. So now we’re apologising to them also, edging backwards towards the exit, Tim’s frozen body between us.

He wasn’t looking at anybody. He’s not even focusing. He didn’t even want to be here. Tim just wanted everything to be as it was one week ago. He wanted to be at home and able to watch a favourite movie, or order pizza, or listen to romantic records, all without thinking of her.


All text copyright Ian G Craig.

Pete.

 Pete.

There is today a common misconception that the grammar schools of the 1950s / 60s were places for those of a privileged disposition. They were not. These schools catered for working class kids bright enough to pass a basic exam comprising elementary arithmetic, a short essay, and a visual I.Q. test. If you could do long division, string a few “what we did on our holiday” sentences together, and spot the odd-one-out circle in a row of triangles, you passed. Known as the “11-Plus”, this exam gave an opportunity for the sons and daughters of coal miners or factory workers to one day enter the lower ranks of the white-collar professions. The word University was on no-one’s lips I knew of, but future “training college” was a possibility.

I have almost no memory at all of my first three years in the excruciatingly dull all-boys Grammar School system. Wearing one’s cap seemed to be of paramount concern rather than any degree of enlightenment. However, in my fourth year there, things took a turn for the better. That was the year Pete joined the school. Or, be more accurate, he didn’t so much join the school as happen to it.

Schoolboys seek compatible male company according to how far they are along nature’s puberty trail. Trainspotters furtively collected together like so many numbers in their well-thumbed notepads. Sycophant minions tagged along behind psychopath bullies. Outsized sporty types substituted bulk for ability, competing for tarnished trophies on which any space for the further engraving of names had long since expired. The short, curly headed boy who always played the female lead in the school’s annual Gilbert and Sullivan production, coupled up with the tall thin boy who went on to become an officer in the Merchant Navy. These being really the only options available for playground socializing, I chose to self-isolate. However, at age fourteen, this other group starts to manifest itself: The “cool kids”.

Across the 1960s schoolyard one began to recognize who else “got” the humour in David Frost’s emerging satire movement; who else “knew” why The Who were cool and the Dave Clark 5 were not; who else was adjusting their school uniform to just this side of school-rule legality whilst still managing to express their individual self. It was in this setting that I was first able to find friends during my grammar school years, and it was into this group that Pete arrived. It was the art room which brought us together. I was a wannabe cross between Paul McCartney and Illya the Man from UNCLE Kuryakin; Pete could have been Syd Barrett’s twin.

Previously, I’d always had things my way in the art lessons. My work was no doubt as dull as the set tasks I was given. Nevertheless, “Top of the Class” awards usually came my way, so art gave me an identity amongst my peers. Pete challenged all that. Whereas I had always been encouraged and rewarded for a high level of technical competence, qualities considered desirable for future employable, Pete had a much stronger creative streak. Not only that, he was already selling his work. He would produce these ten-minute water colour sunsets, washing the paint across the page, before adding a few strategically placed silhouettes. Simple stuff, but awe-inspiring to those with no art skills. On one occasion a neighbour came knocking to see if he had any more for sale. Pete ran upstairs, rapidly dashed off a sunset, placed it still dripping wet into the neighbour’s grateful hands, and duly received his £10 note in exchange. When you’re fourteen years old that kind of enterprise is impressive.  Even more impressive, he had the gall to hang back after class and present our ex-military, strict schoolmasters with his portfolio, touting for custom. It wasn’t long before I was copying his example, selling scraper-board depictions of vintage cars to chemistry teachers who had hitherto only noticed me, if they noticed me at all, when reprimanding me for my complete failure to understand what function their complex equations were ever going to serve in my life.

So it was that Pete and I came together amidst a sea of pupils who were more likely themselves destined to follow their fathers into the district’s coal mines. It seemed not everyone’s curiosity was piqued by the copies of J. D. Salinger that got passed around, or that single snare drum’s thunderous introduction to “Like A Rolling Stone”. Soon to be regarded as a “bad influence”, Pete was certainly of positive benefit to me; the first creative spirit I’d encountered apart from my great great grandfather’s paintings on the bedroom wall.

Grammar school uniform regulations were tough in the late 1960s. As the older boys approached shaving age the headmaster would line them up after assembly and, using a ruler, check that no-one’s sideburns extended below a point on level with the corner of their eyes. Also, that no hair at the nape of the neck made contact with the collar. Hence the popularity of the “square-cut” amongst mods, in which the hair was cut square just above the collar, remaining quite thick without tapering. Failure to comply resulted in the offending boy being sent home to get a haircut and / or shave. If on occasion Pete fancied taking the day off, he would deliberately flaunt the rules. That’s when he would turn up wearing a purple shirt, “gold” tan flared trousers, white corduroy shoes, and bright red plastic mac. And this before any of us had even heard of a Monterey Pop Festival. Knowing full well he’d be sent home, Pete would arrange in advance to be meeting up with a girl in town. Legend.

The girl’s grammar school was situated at a safe distance on the other side of the sport’s field, and never the twain shall meet. We weren’t even within shouting distance. Nevertheless, news of “the one called Pete” quickly spread, and my social life soon broadened its horizons beyond a black and white T.V. screen. Instead, I would now follow Pete down the after-school steps of the town’s coffee bar where his new-found girlfriend, complete with her own entourage, would already be in-waiting around the seat specially reserved.

I was a stone-cold virgin in my late teens. Pete was often teased about his choice of girlfriend, but it wasn’t too difficult to see just which of her glamorous attributes he’d been attracted to. One weekend he and his girl came out to visit me at my parent’s house. We all sat around on the bed, listening to Donovan albums, before going for a walk and writing a terrible song called “Sitting in the Country with My Friends”. (I can play it still). Then he promptly took his girl into our upstairs toilet and screwed her. That was Pete. No-one else had an audience in the town’s coffee bar, and certainly no-one else was having full sex in our upstairs toilet.

In our final years at school the powers that be were never going to make Pete and I Prefects. True, we lacked the muscle power. But more to the point, we were no longer judged to be responsible. So, by way of compensation, our blazer lapels in need of some kind of symbolic enamel badge embellishment, the headmaster put us in charge of the library and the tuck shop. We were happy with that. Firstly, it gave us an excuse to be inside, drooling over the mysterious delights of a well concealed Sgt Pepper’s album cover, rather than face the bleak winds sweeping across the school grounds where, regardless of the season, everyone else was compelled to stay at break time as if in some kind of dubious character-building exercise. Secondly, the profits from library book fines, (overdue or not), and tuck shop ice cream portions cut wafer thin, were most acceptable. Teachers never asked for a proper accounting when we handed over their share of the takings.

My last year with Pete was our first year together at Art College. It was his idea we enroll on the Foundation Course. Otherwise, it is quite possible I may not have even thought of art as a career option. My teacher wanted me to go paint roses on tea trays at the nearby Metal Box factory. The only other semi-creative friends I’d made at school were bound for architecture or, more likely, “draughtsmen” in some local industry. Whatever that meant. I certainly had no specific ambitions of my own. Then as now, it was typical of me to simply pursue what I enjoyed.

It was Art College which defined Pete as the Fine Artist and me the Graphic Illustrator. That was a bit tough to take, but I accept the lecturers’ opinion held an undeniable truth. Whilst my work would always stubbornly adhere to a readily decipherable figurative approach, Pete’s ideas could develop and take flight to an entirely different place. He was always one step ahead of me. Also, I had started to find other distractions: A desire to play music as well as just listen; a girlfriend who tasted of tobacco; and the small night clubs opening in small rooms above the town’s pubs. Pete never chose to socialize in that way. For all his rebellious spirit, he preferred to stay within clear parameters. He was either doing art or doing his girlfriend. During that Foundation Course year his art blossomed. We would work together throughout the day, take a brief juke box café break in the late afternoon to replenish our creative juices, then go back into college to work until early evening, before a last pint at the local pub and a last bus home. Next day, more of the same. At the end of that year, we went our separate ways. Separate courses in separate cities. I dutifully took the graphic illustration route, he, for a while at least, pursued Fine Art. We would meet again, purely by chance, one last time:

I was home from Liverpool for the summer holidays, out shopping, a rock album under my arm, when our paths crossed. He now owned a small terraced house. I think he may have “done the right thing” by his pregnant girlfriend and got married. I think he had dropped out of college and was hoping to sell his art and craft-work to local shops, much as he had to his teachers some short years previous. It was all a bit unclear. I do remember the album we listened to that day: John Lennon singing “I don’t believe in Beatles”. We both laughed at the boldness of the lyric, shocking at the time, and smiled at the irony of it: The band whose life span had been in perfect synch with our teen years was no more. The song said “the dream is over”. I think for Pete it perhaps was.
But I hope there was more.

All text copyright ian g craig

Nightclubbing in the 70's. Part 1.

 

Night Clubbing 1.

He’s late. Again. He’s always late. It’s just his little game of one-upmanship. Middle class parents and all that. Assume the higher ground. True enough he has the wheels for this evening’s entertainment, but we both know when it comes to pulling the girls, I’m the one expected to go in first.

I use the time to go over my choice of wardrobe for the evening, Roxy Music playing in the background. I’m so vain I actually make fashion style sketches of my outfits for every time I visit a club. Each sketch is dated and bears the name of the club underneath. This way I’m never seen in any establishment wearing the same combination twice. I check what I’m wearing now against the chart: Light double breasted Paul Smith jacket; two-tone platform shoes; dark brown Oxford bags; broad tie (it is a Sunday after all), yes, the striped one I think. Everything checks out. I’m looking good. If we don’t pull at least we’ll look like Robert Redford and Paul Newman in “The Sting”.

We show our membership cards at the door. We have ALL the membership cards necessary across two counties and some as far afield as Leeds and Liverpool. We check our hair in the Gents. We sip our Dry Martinis and check out the crowd. They’ve noticed us but don’t yet know us. The dance floor is small and tight. The music is bliss. Stax soul and late Motown, with a side dish of Brian Ferry for seasoning. I love to dance. I’m actually good at it. Not many guys in here can say that.

Two girls are stood on the other side of the small dance floor, all summer dresses and blonde. Surely out of our class? He doesn’t think so. He wants to give it a go. I’m dubious. If they turn us down, and I think they will, every other girl in the place will do the same for fear of appearing second choice. Or third. Or fourth. Fourth choice is not an unusual scenario. We’ve gone down the scale a lot lower than that. Many times. No pride in the heat of the night. I also have other reservations about these two. Because even if we do pull them, the evening is only likely to be one of conversation, expensive drinks and Goodnight Vienna. Too classy.

He’s still keen. Okay, I go in. Polite, attentive, charming. Leave no awkward silences. Style is more important than content. And separate them as soon as possible. As it turns out, no worries. This pair are way ahead of us. They’ve already decided who’s going with who before I even reach them. Refreshing. We’ve clearly met our well-matched match.

After a few Marvin Gaye’s, her polka-dot mini dress flirting in all the right places, she asks the usual: “What do you do?” That old line. I never use it. But I’ve known the words “art student” to loosen miners’ daughters’ knicker elastic at a hundred paces. And some of their wives. “You don’t look like an art student”. She’s right. These truly are my schizoid years. Mild mannered art student by day, dance hall dandy by night. She tells me she’s a secretary. Later in the relationship she will tell me her boss chases her around the office. Such fantasies are a turn-on for some boyfriends. It’s all Benny Hill to me.

The four of us have a great evening. We really do. I will even write a dumb song about it when I get home. Come closing time we walk them out to the car park, splitting into couples, hopeful of that goodnight kiss. There’s even a full moon. She kisses great, not always the case on such first meetings as this, and suggests I sit in her car for a while. Hey, no problem. Polka-dot mini-dress inside a mini-cooper is my favourite décor.

My hand settles above her knee. A little too soon? Maybe so. But I don’t necessarily always go through all the bases in numerical order. The tips of my fingers slip just inside the very rim of her knickers. She kisses back harder, settling into her seat, ready to enjoy herself, knees slightly parting. I take my time. Some things are better not rushed. She doesn’t touch me in return. Classy.

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

David Hockney: “Hockney” documentary DVD & Live from LA event. Review.

 

“What do you think of it?”

The voice came from the woman in the otherwise empty row behind. The one I’d been chatting to in the foyer whist waiting for the Savoy’s Screen 3 projection room to be relieved of its mass of hyperactive children more than a little excited by an afternoon of “Annie”. Mercifully, the cinema’s air con dispelled the subsequent stale odour of pop and popcorn with equal efficiency.

I pondered her question: What did I think of it? Asking me what I thought of Hockney’s remarkable artworks would have been easier to answer. But the Randall Wright documentary, and subsequent Live from LA interview we’d just watched? Not so sure.

“I thought it was okay. I expected a bit more. But I’m not sure of what”. She felt the same, and we both tried to formulate and express our opinions as the sparse audience around us listened in, attempting to do the same. It was a discussion with more space than statements. Later reviews in the press would be similarly challenged in their critiques.

David Hockney was and is something of both icon and idol to former art students of my generation. His media savvy predates and anticipates the later Britart activities of Emin and Hirst. It ensured his work reached the attention of the public eye, and not simply for a fashion sense which rapidly escalated from bowler hat and brolly to blond bespectacled beach boy. With few obvious exceptions, to have art books published about oneself in the early 1970s one usually had to have been dead since the end of the 19th century. So in 1971 Hockney’s own “72 Drawings” found little competition from his contemporaries, and soon found itself onto every self-respecting student’s bookshelf, whilst miniature first editions of the Grimm’s Fairy Tales he illustrated, protruded from Levi pockets as a symbol of cool.

This ready access to his work beyond the gallery walls of London helped establish him as a kind of saviour to those of us who felt the possibilities of a previous generation’s Abstract Expressionism had been exhausted, and the ready-made imagery of Pop Art of limited substance. Hockney’s work was at one and the same time contemporary and traditional. It put observational drawing back on centre stage. It still does. So, sat there looking up at the now blank cinema screen, why my lukewarm response to this documentary? Why my difficulty in answering that woman’s question? What did I think of it?

We live in an age when the works and lives of artists, musicians, writers, can grow in estimation in direct proportion to either the tragedy or excesses of the lives they live. An early death via car or plane crash is seen as a particularly good career move. Failing that, a serious drug habit can prove a marketable alternative. Nothing quite like a cocaine confession to give a teenage pop star a little credibility. Never mind the quality, feel the notoriety.

Paul Simon once said, with a commendable honesty not usually associated with the entertainment industry, that after one achieves a certain level of success it is no longer appropriate or convincing to write angst ridden songs about “sitting in a railway station with a ticket for my destination”. His solution, responsible for the longevity of his success, has been to explore the technical aspects of the medium itself (in his case music) as the motivation. The African rhythms of “Graceland”, not typical of a Jewish rock star from New York, would be one such example.

David Hockney can be said to have pursued a similar course of action. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art, leaving his solitary student tea breaks behind, he has been a hugely successful, famous artist. He’s done this by exploring his chosen medium via a series of technical challenges: Depicting water in the pools and sprinklers of California; the photographic collages and composite Polaroids; stage set designs; and the changing seasons of the Yorkshire landscape depicted across multiple canvases, to name just a few, and not to mention his theories on the use of mirrors and projections in classical art. At the time of writing (and the documentary reviewed herein), his latest fixation is “reverse perspective”. It won’t be his last.

“Hockney” showed the majority of these projects in chronological order, with an impressive digital clarity not experienced on the printed page. Home movies and photographs punctuated the proceedings with appropriate biographical detail. But that’s it. And why should we expect more? Hockney’s life hasn’t involved any greater tragedy or notoriety than most people reading this post. Accordingly, it is simply his passion for and exploration of the painting / printing medium, and the possibilities by which it can depict his mostly contented environment, which fuels his quite remarkable work. The paintings resist any political or social context. There is strong personal style, but not necessarily personal statement.

So that’s what I thought of it: A perfectly fine journey across the surface of an impressive range of beautiful canvases. The hero of the piece is not going to cut off his ear, choke on his own vomit in the back of an ambulance, or shoot himself in a drug fazed game of Russian roulette. In short, Ken Russell would never have made a film about David Hockney. The skilfully applied surface colours and textures are dazzling, but there is no revelation regarding deeper waters, if indeed deeper waters exist. That’s not what "Hockney" does. But what he will do, at age 77, is appear briefly “live” at the end of a documentary about his life, totally (and exclusively) excited about what he’s doing in this moment, (“reverse perspective”), and attempt to convey to us what this latest artistic challenge he’s set himself is all about.

Copyright Ian G Craig. All opinions expressed are the authors own.

The Selfie. Self portraits.

 

Above: 10th January, 1963. “Love Me Do” moves up to number 17 from last week’s 24. Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender” at number two has already made me a music fan. The Beatles ensure it will remain a lifelong passion. My art teacher has set me the only worthwhile homework he manages to dream up in the seven years I will know him. His problem is he doesn’t dream. Maybe two years National Service took that away. I am a grammar school boy, identified as an arty type, but only ever directed to copy from books, add some lettering, and contemplate the painting of roses on tea trays at the nearby Metal Box factory as a better career option than the coal mines. I don’t know why. It pays far less. But for this one Thursday evening at least, studying my face in the mirror, it felt like I was doing Art. Assessment rating: Seven out of ten. Very fair.

So why do artists’ make self-portraits? Certainly not for money. The general public are not keen to purchase the portrait of a complete stranger for their home. One answer to the question can be found in the work of the two greatest masters on the subject. Rembrandt and Van Gogh both used the painted selfie to document their respective journeys through life. Rembrandt ageing with dignity, tinted by sadness; Van Gogh striving against mental instability.

For infinitely lesser mortals like myself the motives are usually much simpler. As long as one has a mirror one has a model; a challenging subject on which to develop the skill of recording from observation. However, no matter how simple the intent, can capturing a likeness ever be the sole outcome of a self-portrait? Or is some other aspect always destined to show through the surface image and disclose more about the person inside? Recently, as I use my own life experiences to inform a book I am working on, I looked back through my sketchbook selfies and was surprised at how much they reveal.

Above: July 1972. I am living below street level in a basement flat. Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral is so close its shadow merges with those of the feet passing by my window. The feet are all I can see and, as I’ve developed the fatal art student practice of “staying at home to do some work”, life is decidedly subterranean. This month nineteen bombs will explode across Belfast in eighty minutes, Gary Glitter will begin his abuse of the pop music charts, and I am on a poorly tutored graphic design course rapidly losing all enthusiasm for art let alone the ability to draw. I'm sure it was all foretold in Revelations somewhere.

Above: August 1979. The Yorkshire Ripper is afoot. The Trade Unions refuse to listen to their own Labour Party Prime Minister and make the ensuing Thatcher Years inevitable. Former Liberal Party leader Jeremy Thorpe is cleared in court of allegations of attempted murder, whilst Syd Vicious dies in his prison cell before reaching trial. I am living under a pitched roof high above it all. It is a time of much after hours drinking and introvert music. Ironically I teach myself more about art and its history whilst working as a full time teacher than I ever learned as a student. After a couple of years in the profession I feel confident enough to devote more time to my own painting. To my amazement my first serious artworks gain a one man showcase in Nottingham Castle. I may have peaked too soon.

For obvious and understandable reasons a full time teacher adopts a kind of alter ego, and I see now in retrospect a clear division between self-portrait sketches made during classroom lunch hours and the more expressive, perhaps more personal studies produced at home. This was also the time when rejection slips started coming thick and fast, as the political landscape turned art galleries which once took risks into formulaic commercial craft shops.

Above: 1990. Glasgow is awarded Culture Capital of Europe whilst London streets are beset with poll tax riots. I am the son of a carpenter. Our relationship is not close, and I can’t walk on water. But I can modify my approach to self-portraiture. Less raw, hopefully no less expressive, the result is exhibited in the Bonnington Gallery, Nottingham.

Above: January 2006. James Blunt and Coldplay win Brit Awards. Thinking this must surely herald the “end of times” I resign from full time employment and, as a bonus for never buying their records, award myself a five year playtime.

Below: 2013. The ghost of Mrs B returns to tell me playtime was long since over. I must not have heard the bell, having been accepted by ten Open Exhibitions, published twice, and awarded a truck full of sketchbooks which still spill from the loft. She leads the way back to class.

 Below: 2014. Twitter becomes a good place for feedback and further experimental self-portraits. According to Rembrandt, “Life etches itself onto our faces as we grow older, showing our violence, excesses or kindnesses.” If that’s the case I really should smile more.

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

Girlfriend or Grapes?

Girlfriends or Grapes?

I awoke in a hospital bed, a young nurse stood on a chair beside my pillow, reaching up to open the curtains which had been shut tight for the previous three days. I have no memory of those three days, and my recovery from meningitis was not anticipated. Still an innocent sixth form grammar school boy, the antibiotics pumped into my system had gathered all the potential pimples from my entire body into one huge pimple at the end of my nose. The nurse took care of it as I blushed with teenage embarrassment.

I am told that at the onset of this illness I had been carried screaming from the house, my language so offensive that an exorcist might have been more appropriate than the ambulance which arrived late. I am also told that, whilst I was in hospital, two school friends of mine arrived carrying grapes. Unable to find me, they apparently sat down on the hospital steps and ate the grapes, before returning to school to tell everyone I had died. This would explain the look of alarm on the headmaster's face some weeks later when I went back to continue my studies.

After my being discharged, a third school friend came to visit me at home. Unlike myself, he had decided against staying on into the sixth form and had started work in the coal mines, an option most grammar school boys in that town took anyway, regardless of the opportunity of further education. We had first met at the back of the maths class. We were both heavily into James Bond novels and secret agents, which explains why, regardless of their being a teacher present, I tried to sneak up behind him and grab him in a headlock. Unfortunately for me, he was already fairly well acquainted with the basics of Kung-Fu, and his defensive karate chop practically took my head off, splitting my lower lip in two. Covered in blood I made a swift exit to the toilets. He followed on behind, worried, but no doubt secretly proud of the blow he'd delivered. The maths teacher simply continued with his lesson as if nothing was happening. From that moment on we were close, hence his visit to see me.

As a young working man, he had now started to earn a wage, and pursue the social life which went with it. In other words, Girls. Therefore his ideas on how to accelerate my full recovery involved something much more potent than grapes. He had fixed me up with a blind date. I should mention here that this would also be my first real date, such being the consequence of attending an all boy's school.

Come the day of the date she and I strolled around the grounds of Newstead Abbey, escorted at a discreet distance by a small entourage of her friends, checking me out as I imagined a Sicilian Family might. Of course, they were not Sicilian, but the mining communities were tight like that.

She was five foot six of a sixteen year old working girl, a striking juxtaposition of jet black hair and bright blue eyes. A factory seamstress by day, a mod by night even as her Midlands working class rocker roots showed through. I was a slight of build sixth former, eager to grow my hair longer than school rules would permit, bored with A-level Chaucer by day, alone at night, sketching, strumming. She was just what the hospital doctor of some weeks previous should have ordered. She jump-started my hitherto dormant teenage years, her nicotine fingers impatient to explore the content of my jeans, taking a firm grip and guiding me through all the gears. I was quite shocked, and I needed to be. She was indeed much better than grapes.

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

 

Bob. (Robert Thwaites).

I knew him as Bob. I leave it to the curious to search the web if they wish to identify the person the UK press would come to label “Britain’s most notorious living art forger” who “conned Antiques Roadshow host”.

Bob was one of my flatmates during the years we attended Liverpool Art College. I made few friends in Liverpool, and kept in touch with none, but Bob was the one I spent most time with, and with whom I had the most in common.

A year younger than myself, Bob sported the post-hippie beard prevalent amongst students in the early 1970s. Tall, of stocky build without an ounce of fat, he peered short sightedly out at the world over the top of his round spectacles. On those rare occasions when he wasn't drawing, his hands would constantly tap his cord jean thighs in time to the tunes he muttered quietly through his bearded chin. More often than not a selection from Jethro Tull's “Stand Up”, which was always his album of choice on those evenings when it was his turn to use our shared portable record player. But almost all of the time, Bob sketched. And sketched. And sketched. The pen in one hand, the bottle of ink in the other, and the sketchpad on his knees, all seemed like permanent fixtures with which he created black and white worlds of caricature and humour. It was this shared passion for drawing which brought us together, plus our early morning forays across Liverpool searching newsagents for the latest Marvel / DC comics containing the work of Jack Kirby, in a time before specialist comic shops were hard to find anywhere outside of London.

The college lecturers treated Bob with disdain, dismissing his large, slightly splattered sheets of animated figures, whilst advising us all that carefully executed diagrams for “how to tie knots” manuals, and similar mundane illustrations, were a more meaningful career path to follow. But his reputation as a “cartoonist” spread across the campus, gaining favour with fellow students because of its Pythonesque humour. Like Gerald Scarfe on Benzedrine.

One night a knock came at the door. It was a student from the nearby University. We could tell that from his purple corduroy jeans and grey trench coat. “Does the guy who draws cartoons live here?” The student wanted a poster drawn for an upcoming concert at the university hall, the payment for which could stretch to five pounds. Bob, delighted at this bit of recognition, agreed to the job and asked for the name of the band. The student fumbled in his coat pockets for the piece of paper on which he'd written it down. Refreshing his memory, he read aloud: “Supertramp”. Nobody had heard of them, but we all laughed. Supertramp, what a cool name for a band. The following day the poster was delivered, featuring a suitably super tramp bedecked in ragged gabardine, wine bottle in hand, and a multitude of Monty Python style rats emerging from every fold and pocket.

The great irony is that, considering the criminal reputation Bob's skills would one day gain, at college he couldn't paint to save his life. Neither could his drawing skills adhere to what one might deem a more academic approach to proportion and form. I saw him try, but his patience would always run out. And yet, whilst others would give up art all together for other career paths, he was the one, albeit the lowest graded, who got to put “graphic designer” on his passport.

I don't condone what he did years later. Something about forging a piece of art when you're an artist yourself seems worse than basic theft on the morality scale. And I have even less regard for the so-called expert who purchased his forgery, expecting to sell it on for a huge profit. One has to smile. And I'll bet many a subsequent fellow prison inmate smiled at Bob's portraits of them.

I smile now at my memory of him. One of the few smiles I can muster when looking back on my days in Liverpool. And I smile in particular at the knowledge of what Bob would really have liked to become, as he sat of an evening reading his Thor comics, and dipping the knitting needle he'd pre-heated on the electric fire into his mug of beer, Nordic style. To paraphrase his favourite Monty Python sketch, Bob never wanted to be a graphic designer. He always wanted to be... a Viking.
.

Top: My 1973 sketch of Bob. Below: Bob's sketch of me (sadly unsigned). Bottom: Bob as I always remember him.

Edit: Robert "Bob" Thwaites died far too young in March 2019.

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

Putting On the Style.

Putting on the Style

We were gathered for the occasion of my boss’s birthday and his retirement. His daughter’s guitar was placed in my lap, whilst his Brown Owl wife, keen to se everything formally organised, handed out the lyric sheets. “Is it in tune? We will do this song first, and then the snacks. Are you alright sat there? Are you ready to do it now?”

I was indeed ready, and went into my song, “Putting on the Style”. Or perhaps rather my brother’s song, he being the designated childhood owner of that particular 78 rpm shellac disc, stored in the white cupboard alluded to in a previous post. I had performed it once before for my boss. In 1984 he’d asked me to do an after-dinner show in Barnstone Village, so I put that particular song in my set because he himself had sung it in a show during the skiffle years of the 1950s.

The sing-a-long went well, after which everyone dutifully turned over their lyric sheets whilst some guy out of sight from me launched into “When I’m 64” and a little girl banged her tambourine with impressive skill. (I myself had fancied staying on for a fun verse or two of “Winter Wonderland”, but not to be). The piano player fared less well, on account of Brown Owl had transcribed the words wrong, attempting to re-write certain verses to fit the occasion. Then it was much furtive gathering of lyric sheets, exchanging each in turn for a paper plate, before relocating to the kitchen for snacks.

It was fun. And I can still hit the high notes, Putting on the Style.


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

Another August evening.

Another August Evening.

It has been a perfect blue and blustery day, and looks set to continue being such into the evening. But no matter how perfect the weather outside, such days can also lend themselves all too readily to spells of cat nap dreaming within, and that, combined with Joyce’s “Dubliners”, has been the focus of much of my day.

I write my journal entry now, before retreating to the garden bench for a sunset of tea and jammy dodgers, the jammy dodgers having been bought from the corner shop just minutes ago, especially for this purpose. My short walk there took me past that rather dubious “Aryan” looking gent, seated as he sometimes is upon the low wall opposite, his white hair visible in the dark shade of the tree. He hates talking to anyone, so I couldn’t resist confronting him with a cheery “Hello”, and some banal comment about the “lovely day”, forcing a response from his grudging expression. I’m “old school” when it comes to cheery hellos and chat with strangers, not discouraged when some show visible signs of surprise if offered a courteous “Good morning” on the street, or a “take one for yourself mate” tip at the bar.

Patricia the Show Girl (I have no idea of her real name) is “old school”. She recognised me last night in The Bell Inn from the time before; the time she saw the light of my camera screen in the darkness above the heads of her audience, as she performed her solo enactment of Bill Sykes’ grisly death scene from “Oliver”.

So, it was nice having a little banter with Patricia the Show Girl. Maybe one day I’ll get close enough to find out her story, without wanting to pry or cause distress. There is something about her disposition which might suggest a once institutionalised person whose behaviour might never again fully align with the expectations of the outside world. Good for her.

Dave the Fish Guy is definitely “old school“. He doesn’t do what he does simply to sell fish from pub to pub. It’s more a performance for him, donning the white hat and coat overalls, strolling amongst us. It’s the fine details, like his bow tie, and kitchen foil silver-lined basket, with carefully self-printed label, which give him away. All combine to suggest one thing: “Show time”. Another clue as to why Dave the Fish Guy does what he does was his asking price when I asked him to pose for a photo. Any other market trader would have accepted a purchase in return, but not Dave the Fish Guy. His stated price was to be photographed alongside the lady friend I was with. We obliged, and at his request I posted that photograph to him today.

Nottingham is presently proving an exceptionally sociable place to be. Once again, I had to walk home, having got the bus time wrong but feeling safe along the way. I think I’m relating to the city in a way I’ve never done before, even though I once spent countless hours behind its nightclub doors. I like it that some of my sketches of the city’s venues come up on Google’s search page. There does seem to be an undercurrent of creative things happening here. Even David Hockney is on his way, or at least a retrospective of his work at the Contemporary Gallery.

My neighbour tells me summer officially ended yesterday. That’s not true. Summer cannot possibly end until the children are all back inside school. And even then, we can all make wishes for an Indian summer of sunny mid-September outings. Outside is still blue and blustery. I shall go and devour my jammy dodgers.

All text, pros, copyright Ian Gordon Craig.

Something about Elvis.

 Something about Elvis.

The big white cupboard with the 1950s style plastic handles, to the left of the tiled fireplace, is where we kept our records, along with the large wooden needlework box, an assortment of simple board games, the all but forgotten pages of a great grandfather’s sketchbook, and a sea captain’s black writing chest. Almost all of these records were of the large, shellac, 78rpm variety, lying dormant in those dark recesses for 53 weeks of the year, until my father’s Hogmanay celebrations came around, for which the entire nearby village of Perlethorpe would seem to cram into our front room. Not surprisingly then, the titles would favour endless Scottish reels by Jimmy Shand and his Band, alongside bland British versions of “popular music” epitomised by the likes of Malcolm Vaughn‘s “You Are My Special Angel”, with just a smattering of Tommy Steele and Jim Dale. I think the only American record present was Harry Belafonte’s “Mary's Boy Child”. Not for our family the vulgar excesses of Johnnie Ray.

As a small child I was more fascinated by the little silver fish which would scarper across the tiled hearth of the fireplace next to that cupboard, but by the age of nine the contents of what was inside became more intriguing. Two discs in particular caught my attention, being smaller than the rest. These were the new-fangled 45rpms which heralded the change from “popular” to “pop”.

I cannot imagine for the life of me how Elvis Presley made his way into our home. Of course, I thought I knew what “rock and roll” was. I thought it was anyone who wore flashy clothes and topped the bill on TV’s “Sunday Night at the London Palladium”. Surely Alma Cogan was rock and roll, and Liberace, and certainly Tommy Steele, judging by the full colour picture of him on my Big Sister’s wall, wearing a blue shirt with red guitar. I had no idea that Elvis pre-dated both Tommy and Jim Dale by at least three years. So, imagine how I felt when I first played those pieces of black vinyl with the triangular centres? It would have been akin to opening my “Lion Comic for Boys”, and having a topless picture of the lady from “Watch with Mother” drop to the carpet. Even more, it was like discovering something which had hitherto been kept secret, and which no-one else appeared to know about, like it had been planted in that cupboard for me, by hands unknown, the final piece in the jig saw picture of dawning teenage puberty.

I soon discovered that the ideal place for playing my new found treasures was the little used Dining Room at the rear of our property. It was here that the hollow space beneath the floor boards, aided by the penny I taped to the record player’s arm for extra bass, would enhance the sound of the track, sending it resonating out into the surrounding forest. I had no concept of what songs were current, or new. To me they were all records. Danny Kaye sat easily alongside Lonnie Donegan on my play list. All that mattered was the magic of the sound. And there was no sound more magical than Elvis.

The intro to “Dixieland Rock” is long, building up the tension, anticipating the moment when Elvis will start to sing. I would try and guess that moment, trying to come in at the same time as him: “Well down in New Orleans at the Golden Goose, I grabbed a green-eyed dolly that was on the loose”. What the heck? I had no idea what he was singing about, but long before I even saw a picture of him, I knew how he moved. However, the real slice of heaven came on the B-side to “It’s Now Or Never”, where Elvis’s superior post-Army vocal chords slide in unison with the honeyed left hand of Floyd Cramer pumping the ivories, as the doo-woppin’ Jordanaires urge them both on from the sidelines: “You say that you love me, and swear it to be true, well a’ think that’s fine if a you ain’t lyin’, just make me know what t’do”. That moment was like Gabriel had arrived with his horn. No digitally enhanced CD will ever match the sound of the first few seconds of “Make Me Know It” as it reverberated atop those hollow floor boards, courtesy of a portable mono record player, not forgetting the all-important penny taped to the arm. And nothing ever will.

It would be a year or so before we got to see what Elvis looked like, aside from a few out of date pictures in Big Sister’s comic, the editor of which surely favoured the safer home-grown sounds of Cliff Richard. We were on holiday in Ingoldmells, when “G.I. Blues” was playing at the nearby cinema. From that moment on Elvis Presley was a constant “presence” in our house.

As short years passed we all had our individual heroes. Big Sister would embark on an imaginary love affair with mop-top heart throb George Harrison. I would be caught trying to listen to a hidden copy of Sgt Peppers at grammar school. My Middle Sister would subsequently scream her lungs out over David Cassidy, to be superseded in turn by Kid Sister becoming the first (and only) punk in town. But we ALL came back to playing an Elvis record from time to time. It kind of united us when apart, and at family gatherings when wild renditions of “Lawdy Miss Clawdy” were the order of the day.

On August 16th, 1977, I was at “home” in my parents’ house, watching the TV. Mother came through on her way to the downstairs toilet. Whilst she was in there the news came: “We are getting unconfirmed reports from Memphis, Tennessee, that Elvis Presley has died”. I started thinking how I could best break that news to mother. Such are the silly details which define our lives. Kid Sister was also at home, and we spent the following hours of the night and well into the morning, listening to non-stop Elvis on Radio Luxemburg. It was hard to believe that someone who had in part orchestrated our lives for so long was now gone, and yet at the same time it seemed somehow “right”. Warning photographs of a “fat Elvis” had never appeared in the British press, who hadn’t really been near a recording studio for the last three years of his life. Also, 42 years seemed so old for a pop star back then!

Elvis was “The King”. He’s still regarded as such. The people gave him that title way back in the 1950s, without being prompted or paid to do so. John Lennon once said “Don’t worship dead heroes simply because they’re dead”. And I don’t. I “worship” Elvis partly because he was one of the greatest performers that ever lived, but mostly because of something which was ignited in me by the contents of that big white cupboard to the left of the tiled fireplace, a long time ago.

All text copyright ian g craig.