Exhibition and book launch

2pm, Wednesday, 1 March 2023 Oriel Môn

Energy within Nature, Anglesey

Leonard McComb RA

‘Energy Within Nature’ is a new exhibition at Oriel Môn of works inspired by the island which coincides with the launch of the first definitive monograph on the artist by Richard Davey.

McComb escaped poverty and rose from the humblest of beginnings to the heights of the British art establishment. A journey that took the artist from a poverty-stricken Northern Ireland to the tough streets of Manchester, to the heights of the London art scene as the Keeper of the Royal Academy of Arts and works in major collections. However, it was his great love of Anglesey that informed some of the artist’s most impressive work and the energy he observed in nature the artist sought to capture.

‘Energy within Nature’ is a taster exhibition for a major retrospective at Oriel Môn in 2025. The book launch includes a Q&A with the author Richard Davey and the artist's sister Anne Draycott.

Early beginnings

Leonard McComb was the eldest of six siblings and the son of an Irish protestant father Archie McComb and a catholic mother Delia Bridgit. Delia briefly travelled to Glasgow where her own mother lived to give birth to Leonard then immediately returned to the family home in Northern Ireland Newtownards near Belfast. In his sketchbooks, the artist recalls early memories of primroses on the banks of the rivers. This fascination and love of nature was to remain with him throughout his life.

When the artist was still in his infancy the family moved from their native Ireland to Manchester, initially to Moss side and then Wythenshawe, to escape the high unemployment and appalling levels of poverty that was rife throughout 1930s Britain.

This working-class suburb of Manchester offered little in terms of an artistic environment or education. Britain's major art schools and galleries were still centered around the capital. Wythenshawe like many suburban areas at the time was developed to rehouse Manchester’s industrial workers that endured poverty in inner-city slums since the turn of the century.

It’s an unlikely breeding ground for an artist at a time when access to a good education was rare and access to the arts was for the privileged few. Archie, McComb’s father, was a painter and decorator by trade and an amateur artist. While Archie’s paintings may have captured the young McComb’s imagination, it was perhaps the woodlands on the edges of Wythenshawe that captured the artist's imagination in his formative years and later the many months spent with his mother in Anglesey that provided his biggest inspiration.

With the death of his father in his teens, McComb once a young whimsical dreamer had to quickly grow up rising to the challenge of supporting his mother and five younger siblings working multiple jobs while studying. It was almost certainly these early life challenges that cast the artist’s work ethic that resulted in his exceptional talent and steely ambitious character that help his rise to the top.

A determined young artist, rising to education

McComb was an exceptional student, the only one of six siblings to win a scholarship to St Greggs Grammar School in Manchester. Determined to pursue his education after serving in National Service, he enrolled at the Manchester School of art. An exceptional student McComb demonstrated his ambition by organising a program of talks with visiting artists, including no other than LS Lowery.

With five siblings, home life was hectic. He eventually left home moving into a top-floor flat in a Victorian house in Moss Side to give himself the necessary time and space to work. The artist worked multiple jobs to support his family and continue his study, finding precious time to observe the landscape and people around him. It was during these early years of independence that the artist began to form his lifelong artistic vision.

As the swinging 60s approached and now living independently, McComb adopted his signature understated flamboyant style – open collar with fine silk scarves and fine clothes found at flea markets became his signature look, one that still is seen among young artists today.

With his newfound independence, he excelled, winning a scholarship to the prestigious Slade School of Fine Art in the late 1950s where he completed a degree and postgraduate diploma.

McComb sculptures: Capturing the dignity of man and natural energy in Anglesey

After leaving the Slade, McComb began his lifelong teaching career in Bristol and he began to work his most important sculpture ‘Portrait of a young man standing’ 1963–1983), a life-sized bronze of a man with an open hand and clenched fist. The sculpture was developed against the backdrop of the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), President Kennedy's assassination (1963), and the escalation of the Vietnam War (1954-75) which deeply concerned the artist. The sculpture creates a positive image of humanity, the artist’s attempt to present the physical and spiritual energy of humanity as one. While McComb studied sculpture, he produced little under 10 bronzes, his preferred medium in his lifetime. Key works such as ‘Two Forms’ (1983), ‘Three Trees’ (1983) and in particular ‘Sunlight on Seawaves (1983) all inspired by natural forms, he observed in Anglesey and his admiration for Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși.

(There are two versions of the sculpture - A gold-leafed version in the Tate and a polished bronze version in Manchester Art Gallery and is major feature of the new Monograph.)

Anglesey, McComb’s great landscape inspiration

A short two hours journey from Manchester, Anglesey became a regular haunt for the artist throughout his life. With his mother relocating to the island to escape the increasingly troubled suburbs of Manchester, McComb increasingly long visits to the island deepened his connection with the landscape and led to some of the artist’s most ambitious and important work. While the artist observed the work Cezanne and Van Gogh throughout his life and even made pilgrimages to France and Italy to observe the landscape, it is without a doubt that Anglesey is where his imagination was truly captured.

In 2005 McComb won the Hugh Casson Drawing Prize, for his monumental drawing ‘Rock and Sea Anglesey’ (1983) which he made 20 years earlier. This vast drawing stretches over 3 metres high and 10 metres constructed of 96 A1 sheets of paper. McComb had been sketching the rocks and surrounding area for many years, but this was his most ambitious drawing. He spent 9 days in 1983 positioning himself perilously on the cliff edge working long hours between the tides to form the composition. He then worked on it at his studio, moving away from topographical realism to produce a work that captured the energy of the rocks and the energy he observed with the island.

Working in such detail on such a large scale with pencil, brush, and ink is an achievement for any artist, to construct of drawing of this nature observed from life is simply an astonishing feat. Just as it said that fellow RA, J M W Turner strapped himself to the mast of a ship to experience primeval forces of nature, Mcocmb had stood on this Anglesey cliff edge, wrestling large sheets of paper in the wind to experience the energy of the Irish Sea.

The energy of nature captured in the island's small and special moments

While ‘Rock and Sea Anglesey’ (1983) will form the centre piece of his retrospective at Oriel Oriel Môn in 2025, the current exhibition ‘Energy within Nature’ is an opportunity to observe some of the artist’s most intimate works inspired by the island. The exhibition includes preparatory sketches of rocks and cliffs that show the early formations of the complex web of lines that led to his monumental drawings. McComb also defined an almost ghostly watercolour style which is captured in ‘Cherry Blossom’ (1979), an ethereal use of the medium where the energy of the natural form floats on the surface of the paper. His preparatory drawing ‘Fish Tapestry’ (1984) shows the artist’s love of fish and the energy captured in their movement. Further work on display includes ‘Camelias’ 2005 highly detailed and complex etchings that demonstrate McComb’s ability to capture energy in the finest of marks, which takes the epic mark making in his 10 metre cliff drawing and renders on an almost microscopic scale.

A radical portrait painter capturing the energy of people

Historically commissioned by the rich, powerful and famous portraits of everyday people are unusual. McComb rarely undertook portrait commissions preferring to paint those that captured his imagination and those that projected the same energy he observed in nature. The new book includes major works such as ‘Portrait of the Artist’s Mother’ (1993) perhaps his most touching portrait permanently on display at Manchester Art Gallery, ‘Dorris Lessing’ (1999) the great British Zibabwian Novelist and activist. Portrait of Phillppa Cooper (2002) possible the artist last great work, featured on the cover of the book, depicts a close friends teenage daughter hovering on a complex decorative pattern of trees and natural forms evocative of persian rugs. While his love for the Cooper family is shown in how the artist captures Phillppa’s delicate smile, perhaps more profoundly the work presents humanity and nature as one. A belief that was central to his work and philosophy throughout his life.

What unites the artist’s sea works, landscapes, portraits and still life’s evokes a poeticism found in his Celtic spirit. The Irish Sea was the connecting force of energy throughout his life, from Glasgow to Northern Ireland, his early observations of the Mersey and his time spent on Anglesey.

“The character of life is movement. Everything moves, vibrates, pulsates and renews itself again. My work is about energy, asymmetry. The Pulsation of nature is due to inner forces, energies in nature offering and inward visitation. The energy of trees stretching and bending, their inside forces giving them a tense vitality. The tension of an apple, Its inside compactness like a world.”

For more information contact: jonathan@beameditions.uk

Collections and previous exhibitions

Featured in major collections such as the National Portrait Gallery, The Tate, the British Museum, V&A collection with exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery, Venice Biennale, New York Studio School, Royal Academy of Arts, and Serpentine Gallery McComb is a giant of figurative painting and sculpture and one of the finest draughtsmen of his generation.

Ends 27 February 2023

For further information Nicola Gibson, Visitor Experience Manager 01248 752014 / NicolaGibson@ynysmon.llyw.cymru