CRAIG HAS MAINTAINED A STEADFAST COMPULSION TO EXAMINE AND PAINT THE THINGS HE IS WITNESS TO ON A DAILY BASIS.
Above Craigjumping features the recurring motif of a jumping boy, available at Piermarq; Craig’s studio is in his backyard. Opposite page Working sparingly in oils.
felt the lure of change and ventured south to Berry, a bucolic New South Wales south-coast hinterland town that promotes itself as the ‘town of trees’. It has a distinctly English feel, likely owing to the ubiquitous greenness of it all, the numerous preserved historic buildings, and extensive stands of English oaks, elms and beech trees planted by the local settlers at the end of the last century. It’s a town where one might well have a romantic stay in a bed-and-breakfast and go ‘antiquing’. Despite this, Craig and his wife Christina managed to move into one of the few classic Australian sixties red-brick three-fronters that exist in Berry. The house stands on a modest block with a neatly mowed lawn. ‘People like to say that I moved into one of my paintings,’ says Craig. Berry poses a stark contrast to his digs prior to the move, when Craig lived and had his studio in the guts of Woolloomooloo, in inner-city Sydney, and he says he is still adjusting to the differences. ‘It’s the quiet that hit me the most initially, the lack of city smells, the night sky, the abundance of bird life ... so many things,’ he reflects. ‘Woolloomooloo was a unique and lively place to be, with a very strong sense of community, but also a lot of heaviness to witness on a daily basis. Makes you very aware of the slippery slope.’ Seeing Berry as a kind of stepping stone, the longer-term plan is to move somewhere more isolated, with a bit of land around them.
