Andrew cranston - never a joiner
This publication presents a selection of the book cover paintings for which Cranston has become so well known in recent years. The cover image is a detail of Cat and cheeseboard (2018) in which a cat sits on the upholstered arm of a sofa surveying what the artist describes as ‘a selection of bries and camemberts, as mousetraps’. Other animals pop up from time to time – a horse, some fish, a leopard; the skeleton of an elk. There are still lifes with fruit, flowers and/or pottery, and lots of landscapes, from the bleak to the fantastical. There are peopled and unpeopled interiors, portraits of family members and celebrities (occasionally curious hybrids thereof), and childhood memories from school classrooms and classical music-filled assemblies to holidays in Switzerland and visits to granny’s flat. And there are quite a few watering cans too.
Each featured painting is accompanied by a text based on notes made by the artist before, during or after making a work. Mostly private thoughts, memories and anecdotes, these fragments jotted down on scraps of paper or tapped into his mobile phone were never intended to be published, but the resulting texts offer personal observations and reflections that Cranston considers ‘something like album sleeve notes where a musical artist might give some background to each song’. The texts are at times amusing, at others melancholic and moving, offering illuminating insights into the mind and life of the artist and the subjects, references and influences that feed into his painting practice. There are notes about technique and colour, about family and friends, about particular places at certain moments in time. For Cranston, writing has become ‘another way of engaging with painting and of activating the interesting afterlife that a work can have when it leaves the studio and goes out into the world.’
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