Drawing (RC0639)
Roger Cecil

This curious and distinctive work is characteristic of a group of pieces by Cecil, wherein self-consciously child-like drawing of motifs, which include elements from his familiar landscapes - mountains, pit-heads, chimneys… - is combined with a powerful and complex array of rubbings and scrubbings and washes and veils of colour. His marks, in graphite and crayon and ink and charcoal, seem to have a life of their own, dispersed across the paper, like scattered thoughts, like snatches of conversation. Pictures such as this are extraordinarily engaging, offering us glimpses into the external life and internal ponderings of a remarkable artist.

One can find sources for this kind of composition. We may be sharply reminded of the work of Paul Klee, for example, who famously declared that a drawing was, ‘simply a line going for a walk’ - a walk which wound together the inner life of his imagination with the realities of the external world. Certainly, by the 1950s and ‘60s, Klee’s work was well-known in Britain: there had been a major show in the Tate Gallery in 1945 and, thereafter, there were several pieces in the Tate’s permanent collection. There can be no doubt that Cecil, as an art student at Newport, would have been well aware of Klee from his early years. But, there are, of course, many other sources of inspiration, much closer to home. Here, Cecil’s composition is made up of the collieries and coal tips of Abertillery, in the Ebbw Fach Valley. This little picture is almost a riff on the coal waste tips: the repeated, inverted ‘V’ shapes, like volcanoes, various in size .. like notes of music, like theatrical backdrops? Or, like signals of disaster? As the crow flies, Cecil lived less than ten miles across the mountains from Aberfan where, in 1966, the coal tips slipped their moorings and smothered a school full of children. The drawing also includes hints of motor vehicles, pits, a digger, ladders and a strangely ominous little aeroplane, with its single propellor, pushing in from the left. These were features of Cecil’s daily life: his father was a collier; the mines were still busy and productive; the mountains were regularly patrolled by planes during these years, their propellors resounding across the valleys; Cecil himself was a casual labourer and builder, and ladders and diggers must have been part of the daily routine. And all these items, all this simplicity, all this sophistication, is gathered together, beneath a surface which has clearly been rubbed and loved and stroked and scratched. This picture is a reflection on a little piece of a life richly lived.

Contact us

Go Back to Collection