Cecil Collins (23/4/01- 4/6/89) - Fool and Flower

Fool & Flower
(1944)
Private collection

Some whimsy, why not.  Cecil Collins  an artist of transcendent imagination, was born in Plymouth , he became influenced by the Surrealist Movement, he had two paintings exhibited at the Surrealist Exhibition in 1936.He had won a schorship at 15 to the Plymouth School of Art from 1923 -1927 and then onto the Royal College of Art until 1931. He fell in love with a Elizabeth Ramsden  a fellow student who inspired him to create a series of visionary paintings celebrating her beauty.
He departed with surrealism  however and subsequently he said:" I turned my back on it and went into the country and started to think..... and meditate on what I wanted to do."  And this is what most of his subsequent work were about,  they were both  meditative and gentle.
In this picture a fool reaches out to a single flower to a backdrop of an empty sky. A sense of wonder occurs, a moment in time suspended, the earth reaching back , a symbol of unity, a balancing act. The present or the future perhaps offering possibilities providing a link between what is visible and under the ground the roots, that we cannot see. An image of ceremony, an image of ritual beyond mere materialism, a touch of Zenarchy.Connecting us to an aesthetic window. Sometimes what binds us is both outside and in.

More on Cecil Collins here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_Collins



( For Ervine

space bard

r.i.p )
.