Contents: Foreword; A Kind of Arcadia, David Attenborough; Part 1: One Line Right or Wrong (1922-46); Part 2: Life Even More than Art (1946-2009); Notes; Main Exhibitions; Public Collections; Acknowledgements; Picture Credits; Index.
Ian Collins is a writer, curator and collector living in Suffolk and London. He has been art correspondent for the Eastern Daily Press for more than 30 years, also contributing artists' obituaries to the Guardian and Daily Telegraph and compiling many exhibition catalogues. He co-produced a television film on Margaret Mellis in 1993 and curated the Mary Newcomb memorial show at Norwich Castle in 2009. His recent books include Making Waves: Artists in Southwold (2005), John McLean (2009) and Water Marks: Art in East Anglia (2010).
'...superb, sumptuously illustrated book...' World of Interiors John Craxton belonged to a great wave of young Englishmen who spilled out of their own drab grey bombed-out country immediately after World War II to discover the colour, light and warmth of Greece. Craxton reinvented his life and art as an adoptive Greek, working in a highly idiosyncratic style distantly derived from Cretan frescoes and Byzantine art via El Greco, Picasso and the Cubists. He painted Homeric characters in a striated bony landscape: Cretan boys, lithe elongated fishermen, dancing sailors dipping and swerving in their baggy whites like seagulls. He was, as his biographer points out, perhaps the finest portraitist the goat has ever had. His cats and fish are legendary. But this book's biggest surprise is the rich, dense and powerful late paintings in a palette of limpid green and turquoise, pale terracotta, enamelled violets and pinks. Ian Collins has done Craxton proud in this revelatory and sumptuously illustrated book. Hilary Spurling 'John Craxton took some persuading to agree to this book, so what a shame he did not live to see this exceptionally handsome and finely crafted monograph.' Country Life 'This book, the first full, illustrated survey of Craxton's work, is an outstanding memorial to an artist who was overlooked for long periods of his life.' The Anglo-Hellenic Review 'Collins is a meticulous chronicler, and his detailed account is enlivened by many interviews with the artist.' ARLIS 'this handsome and luxuriously illustrated volume is a delightful and affectionate tribute to a truly creative artist.' Literary Review
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