The working-class artist Leonard McComb's timeless observations of people and the natural world have retained a powerful resonance decades after their creation. Inspired by Van Gogh, Cézanne and William Blake, the artist's holistic belief that everything is connected by energy and vibration resonates with today's environmentally-aware audiences and is the focus of the artist's new posthumous retrospective at Oriel Môn gallery.

This ambitious exhibition that includes loans from the Tate, Manchester Art Gallery, and the National Portrait Gallery demonstrates how McComb's dramatic, highly sensitive, and profound work is inextricably linked to a landscape he knew so well: the landscape of Anglesey, the island that inspired the artist's deep connection with nature and some of his greatest works. Nature was his faith and Anglesey his inspiration.

Although McComb's studio was based in London, he would regularly visit Anglesey, staying with his mother, Delia, at her bungalow in Benllech. On visits to the coast, he produced many watercolour studies which were later developed into the large rock and sea drawings that are in the exhibition. These large drawings, and many other works inspired by the landscape of Anglesey, were gifted by his sister, Anne Draycott to Oriel Môn gallery in 2020 and form a significant contribution to the exhibition.

Curator Karl Simmons explains that exhibition's title – 'Nature, Energy, Vibration' – emphasises the artist's fusion of observing nature's energies with his own creative desire to imbue all things with an inner spirit. This relationship between nature and energy – inspired in part by William Blake – is key to McComb's work: 'All my work is the result of feelings for the beauty of nature's shapes and energies,' he said.

A highlight of the exhibition is the monumental Rock and Sea Anglesey (1983) – one of the largest drawings in any British public collection – a work which 'vibrates' off the gallery walls.

'Rock and Sea, Anglesey' on display in 'Energy, Nature, Vibration'

McComb came from a working-class background. To escape a poverty-stricken and politically troubled Northern Ireland in the 1930s, the artist's father, Archie, and mother, Delia Bridgit migrated to Manchester when McComb was a small child. The artist spent his youth in the tough neighbourhoods of Moss Side and Wythenshawe in an industrial city already facing decline. With five siblings, the early death of his father meant that McComb held the responsibility of supporting the family from a young age.

After completing National Service, McComb enrolled in night school at Manchester School of Art where he met influential artists including L. S. Lowry. He won a scholarship to the Slade School of Art in 1956. The next two decades saw the artist gain recognition from a London-centric art establishment that included relatively few working-class artists.

Alongside achieving international success as an independent artist, McComb became an important figure in teaching. He co-founded the independent Sunningwell Art School in 1973 to provide affordable arts education, and went on to lead the Royal Academy Schools from 1995 to 1998.

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.

Swyddfa'r Harbwr Feistr, Porth Amlwch / Harbour Master's Office, Amlwch Port

Anglesey provided the artist a place to observe nature away from an unruly Brixton, the location of his home and studio. His observations of nature, his diverse studies of Art History, Eastern Philosophy, and the Celtic culture in which he was raised led him to a holistic view of humanity and the natural world.

Rock and Sea Anglesey, 1983, is the largest work made by the artist at a monumental 10 by 3 metres. Working for nine days at the cliffs in Benllech Bay, McComb observed the connection of the sea, the cliffs, and the sky to capture this profound meeting point of natural energy. Drawn on 84 large sheets of paper, on an easel weighed down with limestone rocks, McComb's insistence on observing from life did not limit the scale of his work.

Rendered in pencil, brush and ink, and watercolour, thousands upon thousands of lines depict a dramatic corner of Anglesey as one immutable vibrating mass. The work captures everything that McComb stood for: his philosophy about the natural world, observation from life, and a profound attention to detail. Rock and Sea Anglesey won the Hugh Casson Prize for Drawing in 2005 at the Royal Academy Summer Show, some twenty years after its creation.

After destroying all of his work in the early 1970s, McComb reinvented his style with a series of epic watercolours that defined his career in the 1970s and 1980s. These vibrate with an abstract energy that is a metaphor for the artist's closely held belief that all living things are connected. Rocks at Anglesey (141 by 115 cm), shows a similar intensity on a smaller scale.

Creigiau yn Ynys Môn / Rocks at Anglesey

This work goes beyond simple observation of nature: the highly sensitive treatment, where background and foreground is united, teeters on the edge of abstraction. It perhaps explains the artist's most well-known quote: 'All art is an abstraction of Nature and of past art'.

The artist's most renowned sculpture, Portrait of a Young Man Standing is a life-sized bronze cast of a man with an open hand and clenched fist. McComb, who was deeply concerned by the conflicts of the decade such as the Cold War and Vietnam War, conceived of the sculpture as a positive image of humanity.

'Young Man Standing' on display in 'Energy, Nature, Vibration'

The figure's open hand and clenched fist are symbolic of humans' ability for 'powerful and gentle actions, both physical and intellectual'. Based on a life study of a model during his teaching days in Bristol, the work resonates with both Egyptian and ancient Greek sculpture. The work (part of Manchester Art Gallery's collection) took twenty years to complete. It is the final version, which was cast in polished bronze in 1983, which features in this exhibition. The first cast which is covered in gold leaf is featured in the Tate Collection.

Throughout McComb's life, he rarely undertook portrait commissions, choosing to paint friends, family, colleagues, students, and sometimes people he met on the street. Like his observations of the natural world, McComb wanted to catch the energy and inner life of the people he observed.

From the late 1990s he focused on a series of portraits which represent the peak of his artistic maturity. McComb's portrait of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing – an activist and campaigner against nuclear arms, and opponent of apartheid – was perhaps McComb connecting with a kindred spirit.

McComb's 2002 portrait of Phillipa Cooper, the daughter of some of his closest friends, shows a teenage girl against a pattern derived from a Persian carpet that the artist had in his studio. This joyfully spirited work locates this young woman, who the artist had witnessed growing up, in this beautifully decorative imagery of nature. The work reinforces the notion that humankind and nature are one whilst paying tribute and capturing the personality of a child he considered family.

Perhaps the artist's greatest portrait is that of his mother. Executed with extraordinary sensitivity, the work is the result of a lifetime of observation and expresses the unique bond between mother and child.

In the portrait Delia Bridgit, in the latter years of her life, sits calmly holding a cup of tea in Anglesey, pausing for thought. McComb's acute observation of his mother's face is depicted with similar lines and marks that can be found in Rock and Sea. In some small way, this extraordinary portrait of his mother contains an essence of the island, a place of great inspiration for the artist and where Delia Bridgit, after a hard life, found her home and peace.

While McComb's work is rooted in the traditions of rigorous observational drawing, his philosophy was thoroughly modern, and his legacy endures. His art is imbued with a belief that there is no division between humanity and nature – a belief which is shared with eco-generations today.

Ffion Griffiths, Digital Marketing and Communications Officer, Oriel Môn

'Nature, Energy, Vibration – Leonard McComb RA (1930–2018)' is on display at Oriel Môn, Anglesey, from 15th February to 3rd August 2025

The publication of this content was supported by Welsh Government funding