Sometimes you see something completely differently from the person standing beside you. Perhaps that's the point.
Our introduction to Arron Crascall's art happened completely by accident.
Maria and I had gone to the Brighton Art Car Boot Fair and, as we always tend to do, started with a recce — walking around, talking to artists and seeing what caught our attention.
Then I saw this.
There was no artist standing with it. No explanation. Just the work.
And it immediately caught my eye.
Not far away I spotted Arron Crascall. I knew Arron as the funny guy from the videos, so I remember saying to Maria:
“Look, Arron's here. He must be filming one of his videos.”
We carried on walking.
It was only when we came back around that I realised the person I'd recognised wasn't there to make a video at all.
He was the artist.
And the piece we'd stopped to look at was his.
That was the beginning of my relationship with Arron's work.
But what made me want to own Alexander wasn't simply the coincidence of discovering who had created it.
It was what I saw in it.
Alexander the Great has been frozen in our imagination for more than two thousand years.
Young. Powerful. Beautiful. Conquering.
He created one of the largest empires of the ancient world — and yet he never lived to see 33.
And that's what I see when I look at this piece.
Arron has rendered Alexander in this extraordinary black gloss. His face is recognisable and seemingly permanent, yet the surface appears to be melting away in front of you.
For me, that changes everything.
I don't see a portrait celebrating eternal youth.
I see the illusion of it.
The young face remains fixed in history, while the person behind it has long since disappeared.
The gloss runs.
The image dissolves.
Time wins.
And perhaps there's a lesson in that for all of us.
We spend so much of our lives behaving as though there will always be more time. Another year. Another opportunity. Another moment to do the things we've been putting off.
But youth isn't permanent.
Neither is success.
Neither are we.
Alexander conquered almost everything that stood before him, but there was one thing even Alexander the Great couldn't conquer.
Time.
That's what this piece says to me.
Whether that's what Arron intended almost doesn't matter.
Because that's the extraordinary thing about art.
The artist creates the work.
We bring our own life to it.
And somewhere between the two, it becomes something entirely personal.
Arron Crascall · Original Work
For me, a portrait not of eternal youth — but of just how quickly it disappears.
Sometimes you see something completely differently from the person standing beside you. Perhaps that's the point.
Our introduction to Arron Crascall's art happened completely by accident.
Maria and I had gone to the Brighton Art Car Boot Fair and, as we always tend to do, started with a recce — walking around, talking to artists and seeing what caught our attention.
Then I saw this.
There was no artist standing with it. No explanation. Just the work.
And it immediately caught my eye.
Not far away I spotted Arron Crascall. I knew Arron as the funny guy from the videos, so I remember saying to Maria:
“Look, Arron's here. He must be filming one of his videos.”
We carried on walking.
It was only when we came back around that I realised the person I'd recognised wasn't there to make a video at all.
He was the artist.
And the piece we'd stopped to look at was his.
That was the beginning of my relationship with Arron's work.
But what made me want to own Alexander wasn't simply the coincidence of discovering who had created it.
It was what I saw in it.
Alexander the Great has been frozen in our imagination for more than two thousand years.
Young. Powerful. Beautiful. Conquering.
He created one of the largest empires of the ancient world — and yet he never lived to see 33.
And that's what I see when I look at this piece.
Arron has rendered Alexander in this extraordinary black gloss. His face is recognisable and seemingly permanent, yet the surface appears to be melting away in front of you.
For me, that changes everything.
I don't see a portrait celebrating eternal youth.
I see the illusion of it.
The young face remains fixed in history, while the person behind it has long since disappeared.
The gloss runs.
The image dissolves.
Time wins.
And perhaps there's a lesson in that for all of us.
We spend so much of our lives behaving as though there will always be more time. Another year. Another opportunity. Another moment to do the things we've been putting off.
But youth isn't permanent.
Neither is success.
Neither are we.
Alexander conquered almost everything that stood before him, but there was one thing even Alexander the Great couldn't conquer.
Time.
That's what this piece says to me.
Whether that's what Arron intended almost doesn't matter.
Because that's the extraordinary thing about art.
The artist creates the work.
We bring our own life to it.
And somewhere between the two, it becomes something entirely personal.
Arron Crascall · Original Work
For me, a portrait not of eternal youth — but of just how quickly it disappears.
