I recently saw the John Craxton exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester and after spending some time with his work, moved on and found hosted within their more permanent collection some of Jake Grewal's charcoal drawings, that he had on exhibition alongside a few of his paintings. Craxton was born in 1922 and yet his work feels as if it still has resonance, especially when you put it alongside the work of an artist born in 1994.
Jake Grewal’s drawn landscapes include naked men, figures that you might need to spend time finding, as they are often hard to see clearly, because they are deeply set into the smoky grit of his charcoal marks. He is obviously influenced by British Neo-Romantic artists, such as Caxton and Keith Vaughan and often works outside, which is perhaps why the drawings feel as if they are still in touch with nature.
For myself it was the issue of how we can be in touch with nature that I was most interested in. Both Caxton and Grewal are gay and I had the feeling that they were both drawn to the idea that in a natural state, conventions such as a male/female cultural divide could disappear. In Craxton's case the human presence is amalgamated with and locked into the forms of landscape by his particular use of pen, ink and wash, whilst for Grewal it is the charcoal that allows him to bring his figures into the same world as his landscapes. This is the magic of materials and how they are worked. By placing an idea into a material form, that idea becomes materialised and in that very materialisation it transcends the human and becomes a thing. The human becomes an ink thing or a charcoal thing and in becoming these new forms, is released from the conventions that bind real people.
St George and the rather small dragon are really a pretext for the painting's real subject which is the magic of the wood and wonder of the lush but wild landscape. There is an arcane atmosphere whereby we understand that human deeds, even mythic actions such as Saint George overcoming the Dragon, are all subordinate to the power of nature.
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