AT TWO TEMPLE PLACE, which is close to Temple Underground station, there is an exhibition, “The Weight of Being”, showing until 19 April 2026. The theme of the exhibition is “vulnerability, resilience, and mental health in art”. The show contains a good number of paintings and other creations by the artist John Wilson McCracken (1936-1982), an artist who is new to me. The reason for his inclusion in the show will become obvious soon.

From an early age, McCracken, who was born in Belfast and educated in Birmingham, displayed artistic talent. In 1956, he applied to enter London’s prestigious Slade School of Fine Art, and was accepted as a student. One of his teachers there was the artist Lucien Freud, who was a visiting tutor at the school. Soon, McCracken became a regular at the Colony Room, a drinking hole in Soho. It was here that leading artists including Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, and others met to drink, discuss, and argue. McCracken found himself in one of the epicentres of the world of then modern British art, and valued his encounters in this inspiring artistic milieu.

Near the end of his second year at the Slade, disaster struck. McCracken had a severe nervous breakdown. He was hospitalised, and diagnosed with schizophrenia. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, being diagnosed with ‘mental disease’ was a great social stigma, and an impediment for a young artist hoping for success in the London art world. His mother decided that the family should move away from London to the northeast, far away from London’s temptations and the intense atmosphere of the city’s art scene. They moved to Hartlepool, where the family had relatives.

McCracken continued his art education at West Hartlepool College of Art, where later he became a teacher. In addition, he worked in the town’s public Gray Art Gallery. While there, he not only arranged for a Lucien Freud exhibition to be brought from London to the gallery, but also got the gallery to acquire a wide range of then modern artworks by artists including LS Lowry, Frank Auerbach, John Bratby, and others. At that time, the works of these now very famous artists were affordable, and by purchasing them, McCracken ensured that the gallery acquired an important collection of modern British art. In addition, he formed a collective of artists called Front Group, whose members believed that contemporary art should not be confined to galleries in London.

While all this was going on in Hartlepool, McCracken never stopped painting. Most of his work depicts people. But like Francis Bacon, whom he knew, his subjects often are in awkward poses. Whereas Bacon distorted his subjects in a modern expressionist way, McCracken depicts them more realistically. As Angela Thomas, the curator of the exhibition, wrote in the catalogue:

“Like Freud he captured the humanity of his subjects: their gestures, postures, and unspoken stories, rendered with empathy and attentiveness.”

I am not greatly enthusiastic about Lucien Freud’s art, but what I have seen of McCracken I much prefer. Freud does not seem to like the people he portrays; he highlights their less attractive features. In contrast, McCracken appears to see what is likeable about his subjects, and gives them an empathetic rendering.