Leonard McComb 1930-2018

While the artist earned the majority of his success in the capital, it was Anglesey, off the North coast of Wales that profoundly influenced his work. He regularly visited when his mother relocated from a troubled Wythenshawe in the 1970s, providing the artist a place to observe nature away from an unruly Brixton, the location of his home and studio. With a Catholic mother and Protestant father (a very controversial marriage in 1930s Ireland), McComb was no stranger to the hypocrisy of religion and the impression of violence. It was his observations of nature, his diverse studies of Art History, Eastern Philosophy, and the Celtic culture in which he was raised which led him to a holistic view of humanity and the natural world. While McComb’s work is rooted in the traditions of rigorous observational drawing, his philosophy was thoroughly modern. An art that is imbued with a belief that there is no division between humanity and nature which is shared with eco generations today.