Notes

The bird motif in Cecily Sash's oeuvre can be traced back to 1955 when she was teaching at Jeppe Girls High School. A dove had trapped itself in her art room, and she was able to make a series of quick sketches of the bird as it flew around in panic. She focused immediately on the monochromatic colour and the ruffling of feathers, but it was the vulnerability of the bird that left a mark on the artist.¹ Slightly later in her career, after the loss of her best friend, Professor Heather Martienssen, and her move to Britain, the bird came to symbolise a heightened sense of desperation in some of her work. Any undertones of restlessness or anxiety are difficult to find in the present lot, however, perhaps because it was sketched as a design for a very public mosaic in Johannesburg. Sash chose angular shapes for each bird, with wide wingspans and scissor-like beaks.

Heather Martienssen, writing in the Cecily Sash Retrospective Exhibition 1954-1974 catalogue, made a point to mention Sash's bird depictions: 'The fine singing precision in drawing that has been building up all these years, the finesse of paint, the fearlessness of colour, the birds who are personages, trapped, vulnerable, heart-breaking, struggling with the vain rosettes of targets from which they cannot escape, the mocking frivolous ribbons that almost, but not quite, conceal the anguish - what is all this to be called if not surrealism? Is there verity beyond reality?'²

¹ Charles MacCarthy. (2013) Cecily Sash: Artist and Teacher. Presteigne, United Kingdom: Studio Sash, 9.

² Heather Martienssen. (1974) Cecily Sash Retrospective Exhibition 1954 - 1974. Pretoria: Pretoria Art Museum, unpaginated.