DescriptionAt John Craxton’s Memorial Service, David Attenborough – friend and collector of the artist’s work – said of him: ‘He had a robust sense of humour and an almost unforgivable taste for puns. He produced a series of linocuts… based on that favourite animal of his – the cat. One showed a cat sitting on a column with the caption ‘cat-a-pillar’. There were others…..captioned ‘cat-astrophe’ [and] ‘cat-a-pult’. But Craxton also knew his cats – their inner lives. Indeed, as his partner Richard Riley pointed out: ‘Craxton was so familiar with the vocabulary of cat moves, gestures and stances that he could capture them with utter conviction in a few strokes of the pen or brush’.*This is quintessential cat staring, wide big eyes, a myriad of meanings to be discerned behind the gaze.*Andrew Lambirth: Craxton (2024) T&H.
