Michael Craig-Martin

“In 1961…Michael Craig-Martin enrolled at the Yale University School of Art and Architecture and immediately found himself all at sea.

…“abstract expressionism was still lingering and painting was painterly. The first thing I realised was that I was the only person on the course who really couldn’t do it. I was just not given to that kind of painting. I remember thinking, ‘That’s it. It’s all over for me.’”

Craig-Martin sees that moment of panic and self-doubt as a necessary part of a creative epiphany that has underpinned his subsequent journey as an artist. That’s when I learned what I later passed on to my students in my years as a teacher. You have to use what you’ve got. You cannot try to become something you’re not. The people who work in that painterly way are doing what is natural to them. If you are struggling to try to do the same, even with the best will in the world, it ain’t gonna work.” …Craig-Martin embraced nascent conceptualism and began making small geometric sculptures. Painting, of a playfully conceptual rather than painterly kind, would come years later. “I was totally green when I wandered into it – and it made my life..”

-The Guardian

---