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Some
artists seem to belong naturally to the limelight; their works raucously
declare themselves and they joust furiously with each other for the
center of the stage. There are other artists whose nature it is to dwell
within the shadows of their own private visions. Aubrey Schwartz is
quintessentially one of the latter. It is no accident that he is a passionate
admirer of William Blake; like Blake, he suffers and exults, despairs
and triumphs not within the circus of society but within the purlieus
of his own thoughts and feelings. His work is frequently sombre and
contains subtle warnings. The tiny rat set low midst a vast expanse
of white hints at the mystery of inequality; the lithographs and prints
of roadside flora at seed time are microscopic jungles of past, present
and future. His work can be sombre but it is not sad; poignant but never
mawkish. Eros is present within it. And as the Greeks knew (and we have,
perhaps, forgotten), Eros is not sexuality alone but the great life-giving
principle and force which includes all that is creative: despair, triumph,
suffering and exultation.