Craigie Aitchison: Going to Heaven
One afternoon in the early nineties I went with my grandparents (Heather and Philip Sutton R.A.) to visit Craigie Aitchison’s home in Kennington, London. He was waiting for us outside his front door when we drew up in the taxi. Dressed in a suit and tie, he pushed a flop of white hair away from his eyes and ushered us up the flag stone steps of his Victorian terraced house.
Craigie’s movements were slow, and he stooped slightly. Such was the cram of objects in the hallway that there was barely enough space to make it through to the living room. I scuttled in behind my grandparents before posting myself on the edge of an armchair. Then, from nowhere, two white dogs bounded over to sniff at my shoes. Their tongues oscillated like church bell clappers as they panted and wagged their tails. To my seven-year-old eyes this was an unnerving place. The room was painted pink and full of exotic things. On a side table to my left there was a plastic rabbit; opposite was a display cabinet crammed full of bejewelled frogs and colourful plates; and lined up on the mantelpiece were a series of crucifixes. Elsewhere I could spot a small box in the shape of a butterfly, strange models of black people, a miniature guitar, a nativity scene (though it wasn't Christmas), and a well-stocked drinks trolley. Most disturbingly though, or was it my imagination, could I see a small bird fluttering it’s wings through the door there in the kitchen?
With an endearingly soft cat like drawl Craigie was describing the breakfast he had had at Claridges that morning. After confusing the hotel with Fortnum and Masons, Philip said that he loved omelettes and had had a particularly good one last summer in Wales that his daughter had cooked for him with brown eggs. After some disagreement, Heather went on to clarify that there was in fact no difference in nutritional value, but in general white chickens lay white eggs and brown chickens lay brown ones. Whilst brushing through his beard with his fingers my grandfather then remarked that in the animal kingdom he would be an orang-utan jumping from tree to tree. “You could be a deer”, he said to Craigie who laughed.
Tony Godfrey once asked Craigie in an interview whether a butterfly in one of his paintings was a symbol of transience. “No”, he replied, “I haven’t got a profound reason for putting it there. If I want it there I put it there. Course, if it wasn’t right there I’d take it out in a second”. Like many artists, Craigie was reluctant to explain his paintings. It is possible however to learn some things about how he worked. For instance, he didn't make preparatory sketches; he went straight to the brush. Moreover, he employed his paint thinly and, rather than painting over his mistakes, he preferred to remove what he had done with a rag and then redo it. This meant that he was forced to make quick choices. He had a half an hour window before the oil dried in which to decide if what he had painted was satisfactory. There was no way of sleeping on a decision and then changing it the next day like many artists do. He must have liked the immediacy that this fast paced approach to painting brought, but this isn't to suggest that he sought stress. He specifically didn't have a studio lest his activities became too much like a job. When done at home amongst his knick-knacks and dogs or, if he was lucky, in a hotel room – preferably abroad – painting was a pleasure.
Craigie's paintings are easily recognisable. Early in his career he settled on a small number of motifs and kept with them. “I do mostly black people, dogs, religious pictures and still lives”, he said when he was asked what he painted. And indeed, when it came to portraiture, he did seem to prefer to paint black people. Euan Uglow said that this was because of the way that light reflected off their skin. Craigie said that his black models weren't vain. What is clear is that his portrait paintings are unpretentious and warm. The surface textures of the backgrounds are one- or two-tone and illuminate the sitters’ features as a lit candle would. Craigie's choice of colour and the thin application of paint mean that the backgrounds have the appearance of shining through the thin almost translucent foreground. He painted the backdrops last, and when he did so, he said, the colours fed off each other. He chose the first one and then the rest fell into place. Critics have compared his background composition with Rothko. But, whilst they both like the same kind of sensual red and could rub colours up against each other like faces in a French kiss, Craigie never understood the comparison. They had divergent ambitions: Rothko's were monumental, and Craigie's humble.
Born in Edinburgh in 1926, Craigie spent a good deal of his adolescence on the Scottish Isle of Arran where he also chose to scatter his mother and father’s ashes. The island’s four peaks are a re-occurring image in his work. They often figure in the background of his paintings and put the foreground subjects into a wider perspective. Perhaps by painting these mountains Craigie obtained a kind of solace in the way that they reminded him of his parents and childhood in Scotland. It is possible to imagine the effect of the rugged landscape looming mysteriously over him as a youngster as he stood on the deck waiting for the Glasgow ferry to arrive. In spite of the fact that Craigie would have been wary of the interpretation, in the same way that his butterflies could symbolise transience the sheer mass of the Scottish peaks might represent something of the permanence of those things that fall outside the purview of human experience.
If you were asked to place Craigie's paintings however Scotland probably wouldn't be the first place that you would choose. The light on the canvas isn't diffused enough; the colours are too starkly lit. In 1955, after studying at the Slade School of Fine Art (with my grandfather), Craigie was given an opportunity through the British council of visiting Italy on a scholarship. He went in an old London taxi, and came back with a bag full of colours that look like they could have been inspired by the decoration of cakes and sweets in village pasticcerias. These rich hues definitely didn't reflect the austere pallet popular under the directorship of Coldstream at the Slade in the decade or so after the Second World War. Craigie's work is conspicuous by its use of colour.
He liked to tell a story about one snowy winter in Scotland when he looked out of his window and saw a dead bird on the sill. He put it in a matchbox and took it home with him to London where he kept it on his mantelpiece. When some years later burglars broke in to his house and took everything of value except the animal carcass Craigie was relieved: “They didn’t realise that by chucking the bird on the floor and not taking it they did me a favour”, he said. Craigie's bird paintings could only have come from the hand of someone with a gentle soul. The delicate animals are often sat on a little branch quietly delighting in something and are shy as if they would be off in a second should somebody feel it necessary to come close to them.
Birds weren't the only animals that fascinated Craigie. He kept Bedlington Terriers all his life and his phantasmagoric depiction of one of the dogs on its way to paradise is extraordinary. In Wayney Going to Heaven it is nighttime and a dog is suspended upside down above a sliver of moon. A leafless tree grows out of the ground at 45 degrees, and while the background white, blue and brown merge around the edges the dog seems ready to be sucked out of the work and into the celestial skies at any moment. “After Wayney died I had about four months when I couldn't do the pictures”, Craigie said. “I didn't know what I was doing. I don't usually paint as emotionally as I did with this, so when people liked it I was amazed. I thought it was too personal”.
Bedlington Terriers kept cropping up in his work. Craigie believed the dogs had the appearance of a lamb but the heart of a lion, and these attributes have an intriguing effect on his crucifixion paintings. In these arresting hallucinations the dogs play the role of pacifier next to the doomed figure of Christ who is painted with different skin tones and sometimes even without arms: “why?” the terrier's manner seems to ask while a fragile Jesus, saffron ground and bare indigo sky approach the viewer. As Craigie grew older he also sometimes surrounded the cross with a halo and, in some cases, a beam of light emitted from the heavens. These, he clarified, were “resurrection paintings”.
Craigie clearly had a religious sensibility and yet, even though his grandfather was a clergyman, he wasn't a member of a religion. He preferred to visit churches to look at the buildings rather than to pray to God, and he was interested in Christ's crucifixion because of the story behind it rather than as a form of observance. The story of The Passion, he said, was the saddest he had ever heard. Certainly it is difficult to imagine another narrative that would have such a singular resonance for so many British people. Christians appreciated his work, and in 1997 he was asked to paint Calvary for Liverpool Cathedral. The picture can still be seen there today.
In 1999 Craigie was appointed Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (C.B.E), and having already been elected to the Royal Academy in 1988: his place in the history of twentieth century British art was sealed. He had squared the circle of becoming a respected artist with an idiosyncratic body of work. He focused on a few themes, which he painted sparely amidst luminous backgrounds. Especially in the choice of colours, it is possible to see the impact of his travels in Europe. Whilst Craigie's paintings are small and uncluttered – the exact opposite of the house where he painted – they speak tenderly of a self-effacing and spiritual man with masses of sympathy. In 2009, after having had lunch at Claridges, Craigie died. “He had a nice smile,” my grandfather said to me recently. “We miss him.”
JAZ ALLEN-SUTTON
This piece was first published in After Nyne Magazine Issue 11. After Nyne 12 is released on November 24th.
