Roman Halter • Life and Art through Stained Glass 1 | Page 52

fig. 11

Dorset, 1.45am, Saturday April 2006
Watercolour and ink on paper

1.55am, that in a treeless landscape the SS men led
Jewish men, women and children and shot them
into pre-dug pits, one on the left attended by SS men
and the other, on the right, where all beings were no
longer alive.”
Or “I dreamt on 25th July 2005 at 1am that as
I was making my way to the beach in Dorset, near
Bridport, on a mount to my left stood a group
of SS men, dressed in black uniforms, chatting
among themselves.”
The English rural idyll is brutally intruded upon
by the events of over 60 years previously. Looking
closely at these works, they have two distinct
characteristics. The first is artistic and connects
with the peculiarly English and Romantic view
of the countryside that we find in, for example,
Samuel Palmer or Graham Sutherland. We might
describe this as reassuring and comforting. But then
scratched on aggressively, in sharp black strokes
of a pen, the memories spit themselves out, vile
and scabrous, polluting all that they touch. They
are drawn with anger, with fear, with emotion, as if
Roman in his last years is now losing the strength
to be solely objective. Up until these small works,
he was making his art to tell of the stories of other
people and not himself. He, after all, survived. He
was one of the lucky ones. But here, in what was
really the final project of his life, was autobiography.
The “man who suffers and the mind that creates”
46  Roman Halter

could no longer be kept separate.
Roman lived, outwardly at least, a happy
and successful life for 30 years before his buried
memories demanded attention. The result was
a series of powerfully telling works, in paint and
glass, made over a period of 40 years through
which Roman continued, and indeed continues
after his death, to keep his promise to his
grandfather. Indeed, it might even be concluded
that in making these works, Roman was honouring
that commitment he made as a 12-year-old, a
commitment that was ultimately not just to one old
man, but to all those who were victims.
“… they that dwell in the land of the shadow of
death, upon them hath the light shined.”
Colin Wiggins
Special Projects Curator
The National Gallery, London