“To describe the world of experience we need a language in which sense can become significance. After London, Ronda has been the most important place in the development of my painting.”
Miles Richmond
Ronda from La Virgen de la Cabeza (painted with David Bomberg), 1955, oil on canvas; 85 x 125 cm
Ronda from Los Molinos to Barrio San Francisco (1955), oil on board; 62 x 76 cm
Ronda from el Puerto de La Muela (1959), oil on canvas; 125 x 85 cm
Ronda with calle Real, version I (1956), oil on canvas; 65 x 86 cm
Ronda from below, version II (1959), oil on canvas; 71 x 90 cm
Rocks near Montejaque (1960s), oil on canvas, 65 x 76 cm
Grazalema from below in bright sunlight, (1960s), oil on canvas; 80 x 98 cm
“Blue fist lightly clenched. Fist of right hand, for the thumb, where the pass picks its way across the mountain, is on its left. [...] On the thumb a smear of blood, a thistle scratch, no more.
The energy of the fist, mountain, mule, thistle, is one and same and it is the energy Richmond found when making this painting. It didn’t come from the mere act of observation, any more than it came from any manual act of gesturing. It came from quitting the self, and feeling, with all six senses, his way into the jurisprudence of the elemental, which holds together the known (and unknown) laws of geology, climate, anatomy and the longings of the soul.”