Bird Form ,circa 1979
Literature : Charles MacCarthy (2013) Cecily Sash: Artist and Teacher, Presteigne: Studio Sash, other examples from the same series illustrated in black and white on page 36.
Note : The bird had long since been an anthropomorphic motif for Sash and when she found a baby buzzard dead in a pond she felt she had the ideal image through which she could channel both her own despair [at the death of her close friend and mentor Professor Heather Martienssen in 1979, and her ongoing sense of loss after leaving South Africa to go into exile in 1974] as well as her world view. In a macabre move, she hung the bird in her studio ... For Sash, the spacial discontinuity of the bird's form, its dislocated wings and broken skeletal structure, matched the symbolic displacement she attached to the opposing forces of 'victor' [it is a predator] and 'vanquished' [it has become a victim].1 1. Charles MacCarthy (ed) (2013) Cecily Sash: Artist and Teacher, Presteigne: Studio Sash, page 36-37. Cecily Sash exhibited at the Venice Biennale, South African Pavilion in 1964 and 1966.
