Advertisement League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Jody Craddock spent 10 years playing for Wolves.Alamy Stock Photo The Premier League footballer who became an artist Jody Craddock on sport, painting and dealing with grief. 9.31am, 26 Jul 2025 Share options Paul Fennessy JODY CRADDOCK is best known as a footballer who made just shy of 600 senior appearances, more than 100 of which were in the Premier League. For many people, having such a stellar career would be enough to base their whole life around. Many of his colleagues go into punditry, coaching or some other football-related endeavour after retirement from playing. Yet Craddock is an anomaly. He has reinvented himself and carved out a second life that has little to do with sport, even if some of the characteristics needed to thrive — a will to succeed, strong self-belief and an ignorance of outside criticism — are the same. This passion began to develop during his school years. Growing up in Redditch, Worcestershire, 16 miles south of Birmingham, the future footballer studied A-level Art. At that stage, Craddock considered drawing a hobby — the kind most people give up once they reach adulthood and become busy with other activities. He had “no money,” but signed for the then-third-tier club Cambridge United. As he climbed the footballing ranks, he could afford better materials for his art. “So I just taught myself oil painting,” he tells The42. “But, it was [still] only a hobby. I was never at the standard I’m at now.” After training in the morning, Craddock would mostly spend his afternoons painting. “The more I did, the better it got, to the point where I can paint whatever I think I can paint. “So it was just a hobby that got out of hand. And now I do it every single day.” It is virtually unheard of for a former Premier League footballer to become an artist. Craddock is aware of others who have done some painting and drawing, but not to the extent where they have tried to make a career out of it. He also knew of a few collectors, including his former Sunderland teammate, Thomas Myhre. “In the beginning, I don’t think [my teammates] thought I was serious about it, which is understandable, because they hadn’t seen it, so they didn’t realise what I could do. But then, when they saw it, I think they were genuinely quite impressed. And some asked me to do portraits of their kids and stuff. “Footballers are quite brutal. If it wasn’t very good, they would have told me. That’s how football is in a changing room. It’s dog-eat-dog. “But they were buying them, so they must have been okay.” Jody Craddock with his painting of David Beckham.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Being an elite footballer also tends to be a stressful occupation — it is a tenuous, unpredictable business that can change swiftly either through injury or a drop in performance. To escape these worries, Craddock used art as a form of therapy or method of relaxation. “When I’m painting, I’m concentrating on what I’m doing, what’s in front of me, so it was a good way to just switch off from football and mentally take a break. Because the only time you switched off was when the season had ended and you had a few weeks off. And even at that point, you were still thinking about fitness and getting back. “Personally, it was good to do something that took my thought process away from football, because it’s physically and mentally quite tiring at times.” Advertisement Craddock excelled at art to the point where he could “paint anything”. He explains: “So my skills, in terms of an artist, by far outweigh my skills that I ever had at football.” For all his talent, however, selling the work remains a challenge. “I’ve still got a way to go where I can make it, so to speak, in the art world,” he says. “I’m selling them, and it goes up and down. I’ll sell some, and then it’ll go quiet for a couple of months, and I’ll sell more. It’ll just go up and down, up and down. I’ve never got to the point where it’s like I’m selling paintings straight off the canvas. “So, that’s my goal. And like I did with football, I will just keep pushing and plugging away and keep trying to find that break, which all artists are trying to get, same as football, same as any job, really.” Making it as an artist is arguably even tougher than surviving in the football industry. Buying paintings is not exactly a pursuit of the masses like attending sporting events. “And in the climate we’re in, it’s financially difficult times. So art’s a luxury, and it’s the last thing on people’s minds when they’re spending money and trying to put food on the table. So I completely understand that. And yeah, it makes my job even more difficult.” Naturally, the 49-year-old is often asked to paint football-related works, with David Beckham and John Terry among the players he has captured via the brush, while he also has a couple in the Wolves museum. It has been nearly 10 years since the first exhibition of Craddock’s works, entitled ‘Le Bellezza Della Fusione’, which took place at Antidote Art Gallery in Leicestershire, kicking off at 3pm on a Saturday and ending at 5 in a nod to his footballing past. There is a versatility to Craddock’s art, too — the different forms he has experimented with include graffiti and photorealism. “It’s about cracking social media and putting something online for people to look at and getting as many hits as you can — that’s the tough part of it, but photo realism, or graffiti, I can do them. It’s not an issue.” Craddock pictured with some of his paintings. Craddock announced his retirement in May 2013, after 20 years as a senior professional and a decade spent at Wolves. He had done okay in terms of earning money from the game, but “it’s nowhere near what it is nowadays”. He adds: “I always wanted to earn more money when I was playing football, but I think that was just a part of being a centre half, you were never on a centre forward’s wages. I’m afraid that’s how it always was. “I always tried to save as much as I could. I never went out and bought a sports car. I always tried to be quite sensible, so I paid for my house, which was majorly important, and just tried to be wise with it so that at the end of my career, I could try and bridge that gap, which is such a long time from retiring to collecting my pension.” His head was telling him to go down the coaching route, like many recently retired footballers, while his heart said otherwise. “I’ve always been a family man,” he says. “I’ve always wanted to see my kids at Christmas, which you struggle with when you’re a footballer. “So for me, it was a no brainer that if I do my art, and don’t get me wrong, it’s a tough world to be in the art business, but if I do that, and I still get to see my kids at Christmas more than I ever did playing football and holidays, it will be so much better, because when I was off with football, they were always at school. When their school time finished for the summer, I was back training. So nothing ever coincided. “And that’s a kind of thing you just have to take on the chin as a footballer, if you want to be a footballer, that’s what you have to deal with. And, going football training on Christmas Day and travelling over for a Boxing Day game, that’s just part and parcel of the game, and you deal with it. “So, for me, at the end of my career, to just make that decision. I knew how tough art was going to be, but it meant I could see my family, and at the end, they are really important times, and they grow up so quickly that that was important for me, so at the end of the day, that was the decision I made.” The profound importance of family, in good times and bad, is something the ex-footballer can appreciate more than most. In 2002, when Craddock was a player in the Premier League with Sunderland, he lost his four-month-old son Jake to cot death Craddock, his wife Shelley, and other sons Joseph, Luke and Toby still mark his birthday on 25 March with a cake, and the former player will also post a photo on social media in tribute to his late son to keep the memory alive. “[It was] very difficult. How do you cope? “I went back to training a week later. I had to do it. I could not sit at home anymore, because I was driving myself [mad]. What do you do? Just sit and think. And it was not good mentally for me or my wife. “I picked up the paint brushes, and I would just paint at home. Yes, a little bit selfish that I would then practice painting, whilst obviously my wife is also going through the grief. “But the painting helped. And just trying to keep busy and throw myself back into things, which is how I deal with things, and it really helped me at the time. “We’ve come through it and have some great memories with Jake, which is all we can take from it.” Jody Craddock with his wife Shelley and children at Molineux in 2014.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Craddock says he has learned to cope better with this tragedy over the last 23 years. “Time heals,” he says. “However difficult it is in the moment, it does get easier, and you never move past it, and you never forget. But you learn to cope and live with it. And so, that’s all it is: keep busy and have plenty of support. Have a support system around you where people can help you out, and take your mind off things at times.” The sport also helped, simply allowing Craddock to think about something else for a short period. “When you’re playing football, I can’t think of things other than the football or the player or what’s going on. So for me, it was a great distraction at a tough time. “It was always a privileged position that I was in being a footballer, and I would always work seriously hard to get there and stay there. So I had to continue along that path, and I had to give it every single thing I had. And that was never in doubt, and I was always going to continue that. “So [it was about] not letting it affect me. And I think I did very well at not letting it affect my game on the pitch. I think it was my character and how I dealt with things, so fortunately for me, [my performance level] was okay.” Craddock faced another extremely difficult experience when Toby was diagnosed with leukaemia at the age of two and a half. Around that time, he donated the majority of the proceeds from his testimonial to Birmingham Children’s Hospital, which was aiming to raise £4 million to revamp its cancer centre. “You have no choice, you get on with it and you deal with it because if you don’t deal with it, what’s going to happen? “You just get on as best as you can and function as a family and try and keep things as normal as you can at home, and for your other children, and you find a way through it. “You kind of just get caught in a bit of a bubble and just float along some days. You’re in the hospital, you’re back at home, and then you’re back in again. You take it day by day and don’t look too far ahead, and do what you can to get through it.” Fortunately, Toby made a full recovery, ultimately, and is “doing fantastic” today. “He doesn’t particularly remember anything about it, which is good for him. It was a tough time for us, but it was a really tough time for him. So for him not to particularly remember anything is a relief for us.” My son Toby was diagnosed with leukaemia 8yrs ago and spent 3 yrs on chemo and 5yrs in remission,today he was discharged. I thought hard about posting this because I know how life can bite you on the arse but I wanted to thankyou all for your amazing support through this time.😘 pic.twitter.com/iKHpbprxss— Jody Craddock (@MrJodyCraddock) July 21, 2020 These traumatic events have inevitably given Craddock a different outlook on life from most. “Sometimes I think: ‘Oh, I’m having a tough day.’ I take myself back and think: ‘Well, [Toby] had a tough day, really.’ He was having a hard time, and they were trying to put needles in him.’ So my fear of needles vanished after seeing him in the hospital, having a needle stuck in his arms every day. So you kind of just say: ‘Come on, put your big boy pants on and grow up.’ And I’m not scared of needles anymore. “After Jake, as well, I brutally critiqued my own game when I was playing, and this was more at Sunderland, and if we lost, it just ruined my whole weekend completely. And then just losing Jake put things in perspective. “And I used to think, okay, it isn’t the be-all and end-all losing a game of football. If I made a mistake, you know, so does everybody. So I did learn then to cope with the not-so-good side of football a lot easier, because that was nothing in comparison to what I’d already been through.” You can find out more about Jody Craddock’s art via his official website here. Paul Fennessy Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “The Premier League footballer who became an artist”. Recipient's Email Feedback on “The Premier League footballer who became an artist”. 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