Notes

This colourful gouache on paper study, related to the much larger 1973 Target Composition tapestry by Cecily Sash (right), encapsulates many of the elements of her visual language (fig.1). Birds of various kinds emerged in her work between 1955 and 1963 and became a primary subject in her expressionistic compositions. In Target Composition birds appear out of abstracted figurative motifs surrounded by implied trees, an animal skull and thorns. The most insistent features of the artist’s vocabulary, stark colours, black with white and pale tints, and the essentially linear rhythms of her work are all evident in this work.