The hawk has flown

Osi Rhys Osmond

A remarkable book was published last week celebrating the life of Osi Rhys Osmond - artist, writer, poet, teacher, broadcaster, effervescent raconteur, all-round sage and a great friend, but no relation. Entitled Encounters with Osi* it consists of contributions from 42 friends and family members who provide a wide range of perspectives on a many faceted, renaissance figure. Most of all, however, the book is remarkable for its large number of reproductions of Osi’s work: Welsh landscapes and the mythologies they capture, charcoal drawings, portraits, and images from the many lands he visited, from Palestine to Africa and India. A unifying feature is the brightness of the colours, escarpments of deep blues, yellows, browns, oranges, and reds (his favourite). Osi was both colourful and deeply into colour.

He was brought up by a mining family in Wattsville in the Sirhowy Valley, and educated at Newport College of Art in the early 1960s. In his twenties he moved with his family to western Wales and spent many years in Pembrokeshire.

He became Head of Art at Narberth Secondary School and lived at Clunderwen. When he went for the interview, by train, it was the first time he had been further west than Porthcawl. He describes in the book his experience of passing Kidweli and noticing through the window two men in a field cutting hay with a scythe: “I’ll never forget that image because I thought, ‘Where am I going? I’m going back in time, back in history.’ My perception of time and history is an east/west one. The west is old, the east is new. East intrusive, the west is inclusive and ancient and substantial and formed.”

This movement was reflected in Osi’s preoccupations: “It wasn’t until I went to west Wales to teach that I began to think much more carefully about questions of Welsh culture and the language in particular.” He learned Welsh, became an activist with CND and many other campaigns, and stood as a Plaid candidate for Pembrokeshire county council twice and in a general election in the county once, political battles that went on unsuccessfully for 15 years.

Later, after he had moved to Llansteffan to work as a lecturer in Carmarthen School of Art, he was successful in standing for Carmarthenshire county council. He served for three years but found the experience dispiriting. Osi was not cut out for the frustrations of politics. His canvass was much broader.

Among his many projects at Llansteffan was the Hawk and Helicopter, a series of drawings, paintings and texts he created while watching the sunset from a high point overlooking Carmarthen Bay. As he described it, the innocence of the coastal land suddenly became something else. “It’s the hawk’s home and he kills to live, while the helicopter comes to rehearse killing for strategic reasons.”

Osi was diagnosed with cancer in early 2013 and was given only months to live. Yet his extraordinary vitality gave him another two years, which he used to the full. “I’d love to live for another 20 years but that’s impossible,” he said “Instead I’ll experience the next two minutes as intensely as I can.” When he died in March Hilary, his wonderful wife, said, “The hawk has flown.”

* Encounters with Osi, Edited by Iwan Bala and Hilary Rhys Osmond, is published by the H’mm Foundation at £24.99:  www. thehmmfoundation.co.uk