Postcards, paintings and portraits drawn from the Covid-19 pandemic

For the first time, Roamer, and apparently many other local folk, became aware of the pandemic that enshrouded the world with illness and death during 1918/1919.

And whilst we were blissfully unaware that another pestilence was looming, many other stories emerged here and in the international media about the so-called 1918/19 Spanish Flu.

One poignant tale shared on Roamer’s page recounted Norwegian artist Edvard Munch’s macabre portrait of a screaming man.

Often reproduced on Halloween face-masks it’s said to be the second most famous painting in history, after Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

Munch was mentioned here because one of his lesser-known self-portraits was painted during the 1918/19 pandemic and is considered by historians to be one of the few works of art depicting the post-WWI pestilence.

Then Bangor-artist Leslie Nicholl told us that the acclaimed Austrian painter Egon Schiele is also remembered for his work during the WWI pandemic.

Leslie shared a copy here of Schiele’s tragic portrait “of his pregnant wife Edith” and explained that Schiele drew it “the night before Edith died of Spanish Flu.”

It’s regarded as Schiele’s last drawing as he became infected with the virus and died two days later, aged just 28.

Like all of us, Leslie Nicholl’s daily routine is greatly restricted by Covid-19 regulations, and sadly, the pandemic pulled the plug on his latest exhibition.

He’d been preparing for a major showing of his work in Bangor’s Old Courthouse as part of the town’s August Open House Arts Festival, but that was of course called off.

The exhibition entitled ‘All the Monsters are Frightened of the Dark’ was painted “for my mother and father” Leslie told me.

He hopes the exhibition will happen when the pandemic has passed.

“The series of 50 paintings follow a journey from the Long Hole in Bangor, a Victorian harbour, to the site of Caproni’s Dance Hall,” he explained.

His mum came from Sion Mills and his dad from Strabane, “no more than a few walkable miles apart,” Leslie added “yet they met dancing at Caproni’s in Bangor!”

They married and settled in Bangor and “as a child I often went sailing with my dad, although I was always sea-sick!” the artist reminisced.

“I loved being out on a boat,” Leslie added “particularly the smell of the sea-air and water and the sound the sails and rigging made when the wind raced through them.”

He has vividly recreated his childhood memories of Bangor’s promenade, harbour and seafront in his paintings.

“For many years my wife Elaine and myself have lived opposite the slipway for boats,” Leslie told me “and for many years my mum and dad came to our home and we went for walks and meals near our home.

“We walked past the slipway and not a word was said about how my mum and dad met until one evening down at the slipway and I asked my dad ‘well, what do you think of Bangor? Do you think you would consider retiring here?’”

Leslie immediately noticed that “the atmosphere somehow changed” between himself and his dad after asking the question.

Sometime later he was told that his dad had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

“He knew he wouldn’t be retiring to Bangor,” Leslie admitted. Roamer is looking forward to the opening of the exhibition in August 2021 when life will hopefully have returned to some sort of normality, but Leslie hasn’t let the pandemic interrupt his work!

“I have come across a mass of envelopes and writing paper in my studio,” he told me when the first lockdown was at its peak.

“I’m sending ‘letters’ to long-dead artists who have been an inspiration to me over the years,” he added.

The ‘letters’ are pen-and-ink drawings on the envelopes and writing paper, with pencil drawings inside the envelopes.

They’re mostly based on memories of people and places he’s visited, like the Museum of Russian Icons in Moscow and the famous garden created by film director Derek Jarman at his home in Dungeness.

“One image is drawn with pen and ink on the front of the envelope,” Leslie explained “and a second related image is drawn on a postcard size of buff writing paper. The second image can go inside the envelope or be displayed beside the envelope.”

There’s a postcard inspired by Picasso, another by Egon Schiele, another based on a visit to Dublin’s National Museum, another from Vienna’s History Museum.

“I managed to get 12 postcards and envelopes drawn during May,” Leslie explained, which he has mailed “to random addresses from an old telephone directory, free, as a gift to whoever gets them - a kind of travelling exhibition, thanks to the postman!”

Aside from the random mailings, he posted one to Ian Hislop, journalist, satirist, writer, broadcaster and editor of Private Eye.

“To my utter surprise,” Leslie told Roamer “Ian Hislop wrote back to me, thanking me for the drawings and wishing ‘your travelling exhibition of postcards all the very best of luck.’”

And Leslie’s lockdown drawings, along with Ian Hislop’s reply, are being archived in the Public Records Office’s Covid-19 collection.

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