'The
will to live, to dream and to assert the values of the human heart
- this is all I try to communicate to others.'
Josef Herman. 1911 - 2000.
The image impressed me.
The woman sits solidly central. A monumental figure, timeless. She
is every woman. A mother. Hands like shovels, able to defend and
protect, a workers hands. Wrapped snug and tight, the baby is held
close to the heart. In the shawl that binds mother to child they
become one. I know that feeling. I remember it still after many
years. In some Eastern European countries babies are wrapped tightly,
bound like little parcels, independent units. In Wales they were
bound in wool by the shawl that enveloped both child and mother.
Two become one, a single unit.
(A contemporary Welsh artist - Nigel
Williams - uses the shawl as a metaphor for the security and
warmth of his childhood in Ystradgynalis in the Swansea Valley -
CLICK HERE to read about, and view, his work)
The image to which I
refer, that struck such a chord in me as an older child, was painted
by Josef Herman.
Familiarity dulls the
vision. Sometimes a fresh or independent eye can appear to see more,
it can strike to the heart of the subject enabling others to view
more clearly another side of the story, another slant on life and
the human condition.
Herman arrived in Wales
in 1944. A Polish Jew, a refugee born in the Warsaw ghetto in 1911,
fleeing from the Nazi tyranny engulfing Europe.
He found a home in Wales,
at Ystradgynlais in the Swansea Valley, and a people who fitted
perfectly as subject matter. But Herman was not a cold observer
of industrial village life in Wales. He was a passionate and compassionate
maker of icons, images that go beyond the representative. |
