As the artist’s eldest son I helped to promote AS Craig’s paintings back in the 1970s, when the paint on his canvases was barely dry. Forty years on and having re-discovered those canvases, with the paint now flaking in places, I have decided to restore and reframe a selection of my father’s work because I feel that it deserves a wider audience and greater recognition. With the help of one of my own sons we will publish the restored paintings on this website.
The paintings that feature on this website have been hidden from view since 1980, stored in the attic of a relative. Most of them display a haunting surreal irrationality fused with sharp social, and anti-religious, statement. Others, more rational but still challenging, are records of an impoverished childhood in a Scottish slum tenement of the 1920.
You can get in touch via email: ascraigartist@gmail.com
Q&A with the artist’s eldest son, David
1. Why are you doing this project?
I want to protect and enhance my father’s legacy. The over-riding goal is to prevent his paintings from deteriorating any further and, going on from there, to show them at their best. I’ve obviously got an emotional attachment to them but I think the project would have merit even if I weren’t related to the artist: they deserve the treatment they’re getting.
I hope to get as large an audience for his work as possible – hence the website – and put on an exhibition towards the end of 2015. If people like the work enough to buy it, then great.
2. Why now?
Because I’m retired and have the time to do it! And my wife has given me the shove I needed.
3. What memories do you have of your father painting?
He used to paint in his bedroom, both in Caerffili and Cefn Hengoed. I would visit him regularly, perhaps weekly, taking him canvases and paints, and watching him work. He would ask my opinion. I reckon he completed 40, maybe 50 paintings and each one would have to be finished before he’d start the next.
4. Why do you think he started painting?
I don’t really know. It came out of the blue: he asked if I could buy him some materials and I did. He’d done a bit of amateur dramatics when he was younger and I’ve got a vague memory of him doing some writing at some stage so perhaps by the time he reached his 50s he saw painting as a way of getting some recognition for the artistic side of his character. We never discussed it.
5. How did the exhibitions come about?
I would take a sample of his work in the car or on the train, turn up at a gallery and ask if they were interested in exhibiting them. I went to London a couple of times which resulted in two exhibitions at the Woodstock Gallery. Another London gallery said they would exhibit my father’s work if I could get them a buyer for an Augustus John painting they were trying to sell. £16,000 sticks in my mind. Anyway, no-one I spoke to back in south Wales was interested, not at that price at any rate.
6. Where did your father get his inspiration from?
Magritte, Dali and Di Chirico. He borrowed books from the library and would study their work. That was it; he worked in total isolation – no social group or anything, no fellow artists to bounce ideas off.
7. How many paintings did he sell?
Maybe about 20. A couple to Galerie Convergence in Nantes, several via the Woodstock Gallery, the Arts Council of Wales bought 3 or 4. I remember a friend of mine bought some.
8. Why do you think he stopped painting?
Most likely he wasn’t getting the recognition he felt he deserved or selling enough to make it financially viable. And as I started a family of my own I had less time to give to the exhibition side of things.
AS Craig 