John Craxton: A Romantic Spirit Interview by Simon Martin
John Craxton is featured in the exhibition 'Poets in the Landscape: The Romantic Spirit in British Art'. Since 1946 Craxton has lived between the Greek island of Crete and his London studio, where Simon Martin met him to discuss his life and work.
(SM) I’d like to begin by asking you why you think there has been such a romantic preoccupation with landscape in British art? (JC) What is so important in any country is 'folk memory'. So many of us in Britain are interested in the landscape. Why? Because it was the land that our ancestors worshipped long before St Augustine turned up. People were worshipping trees and lakes, bogs, rocks, mountains, hills and groves – the sun, the moon and the seasons - that’s what they were interested in and quite naturally, because we live in that world. In a way, this interest in landscape reflects that equally ‘British’ preoccupation with the weather… Absolutely! Light and lack of light. Light coming in through clouds and beams of light, moonlight, sunlight – we’re obsessed with it in this country, and quite rightly too, because it’s part of us. Artists and poets in Northern Europe have always had a deep-rooted affinity with lakes, mountains, the evening, moon, 25