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Tuesday, 17 August 2021

Artlyst - Roger Cecil: A Once In A Generation Welsh Painter

My latest review for Artlyst is of Roger Cecil – A Secret Artist at y Gaer Museum & Art Gallery:

'From his base in the Ebbw Fach valley, Cecil was inspired by the way in which the industrial combined with the natural environment; his pictures evoking the scars of the valley and the grandeur of nature on the mountainsides where he walked, often staying out for nights on end. Peter Wakelin, author of ‘Roger Cecil: A Secret Artist,’ writes that Cecil’s ‘paintings sang with harmonies of greys, pinks, whites, deep brown and coal-black, and they were complex in texture – rough, dry, polished, pitted.’ 

His style was abstract or semi-abstract, with landforms and bodies often viewed from above and erotically interlocked. Cartographic symbols were graffitied into layers of paint using lines that walked the landscapes they sketched. He scratched and scraped marks and images into the layered ground of his paintings, the marks being, Wakelin suggests, ‘like the scars in his abused industrial landscape’ but also bringing ‘to mind shamanic objects’ that hint ‘at concealed meanings’. In 1995, he saw the Royal Academy’s Africa exhibition, becoming fascinated with the role of the artist/shaman as ‘the one who manifests secrets to be decoded or interpreted by the viewer’.' 

See also my sermon Essential Wisdom which also explores aspects of Roger Cecil's life and work.

My other pieces for Artlyst are:

Interviews -
Articles -

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Posted by Jonathan Evens at 19:14
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