Trevor Sewell (1957-2025)

I’d known Trevor for over three decades. We first became aware of one another in 1991. That year, he began studying fora BA (Hons) degree in art at — what was in those days called — the university’s Visual Art Department. (It was situated on Llanbadarn Road, Aberystwyth, in the building now occupied by Gorwelion Day Hospital.) I was a part-time tutor, then. Trevor, for his part, was habitually dressed in dungarees and a beret; desperate to leave behind in Bedford his identity as a typesetter and compositor, and eager to prove himself an artist in the making. He succeeded and, in so doing. became a pillar of the School of Art (as the department became known).

One morning, in his second year of studies, Trevor walked into the studio for his tutorial carrying several plastic bags stuffed full with small paintings. He’d made them at an alarming rate over weekend, while in a hypomanic state. (Trevor suffered from a bipolar disorder.) ‘What do you think … honestly?’, he asked enthusiastically. ‘There are a great many, Trev’, I replied, diplomatically and honestly. Later that week, having recovered his equilibrium, he revised his estimation. ‘Pretty awful weren’t they, John’. ‘Daubings, Trev. Daubings’, I confirmed, kindly and honestly. Trevor never again allowed himself to be the victim of his malady.

During his third year, Trevor was my final painting tutee on Thursday afternoons. At the conclusion of the tutorial, we’d enjoy an earnest discussion about theology and his spiritual pilgrimage — which was, at that time, without either direction or destination.

That changed, some months later. He ran up to me in the corridor and announced, excitedly: ‘God’s found me!’ Trevor was not in a hypomanic state on this occasion. But, rather — like the demoniac Legion after Christ had exorcised him — ‘in his right mind’.

Trevor embarked upon an MA Visual Art degree in 1995. His Masters exhibition included a portfolio of austere photographs depicting the interiors of derelict and decaying chapels in the locale. The prints were characteristically very dark and close-toned. They were saved from utter indistinction only by a dim light that entered the scene, often through a single window. And with it entered a rudimentary but nonetheless profound religious metaphor – a dimension that had been entirely absent from his work, hitherto. He’d go onto research this theme when he undertook an MPhil Art History degree, in 2004.

In 2008, I co-curated (along with Martin Crampin and Martin O’Kane) an exhibition entitled Imaging the Bible. Trevor submitted Revelation (2008). The work was based on the theme of darkness in the Old Testament. In the accompanying text, he wrote: ‘My painting reflects a darkness wherein God can be found’. I suspect this interpretation was as much autobiographical and experiential as it was biblical. Like the psalmist, Trevor encountered grace, succour, and the presence of God where he least expected it:

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light around me become night’,
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is as bright as the day,
for darkness is as light to you.

Psalm 139.11-12

More recently, Trevor developed an occasional series of small meditative studies — which he’d begun during lockdown — based on Borth Community Gardens. The gardens became, during a period of great darkness for us all, his ‘other Eden, demi-paradise’, to quote Shakespeare. A place of consolation. The paintings reveal a sensibility informed by the work of European painters Paul Klee and Pierre Bonnard, as well as a gardener’s tenderness.

Periodically, Trevor would return to acrylic painting and a mode of gesturalism that he’d practiced during his undergraduate studies. The works are small-scale homages to the work of American and British abstract and expressionist art since the 1940s, especially the paintings of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Frank Auerbach, and Leon Kossoff. Their influence is also evident in his mobile phone artwork. The device was a hand-sized studio. The small-scale and immediate images he produced enabled him to explore variations on simple propositions quickly and in great number. This was painting without paint. The images are very often based on the landscape motifs he knew and loved most intimately around Borth, Ynyslas, and Aberystwyth.

All these series can be found on his Instagram accounts, alongside many ‘selfies’ that capture a range of facial expressions and location backdrops:  Trevor gurning on Borth Beach; Trevor frowning in the supermarket; Trevor screaming on the dunes; Trevor yawning in hospital; Trevor laughing on the Promenade. They were self-confessedly inspired by Rembrandt’s self portraits of the same, made when he was a young man. The photographs are a trace of not only his personal history and movements, but also the process of aging and changes to his facial furniture (what want of a better term). Beards come and go. Hair goes … never to return. In one, he looks like a sinister garden gnome. In another, uncannily like the actor Donald Pleasence in the role of the James Bond villain Ernst Blofeld. (I shall pass over the innumerable photographs showing the inside of his waste-food bin. ‘Trev! What were you thinking?)

While a so-called ‘local artist’, Trevor visited London regularly, and kept abreast of the latest exhibitions of abstract painting and contemporary photography. In 2022, he saw an installation of paintings by the American artist Joan Mitchell, at Tate Modern, London. Trevor had an enormous regard for her work. He was always going on about her. ‘Is she your new girlfriend, Trev?’, I’d chide. ‘Well, actually …’, he’d gently push back, smiling wryly. Trevor would return from these cultural forays fired-up to either make his own work or curate an exhibition to help other local artists publicise their own. His altruism and imaginative kindness knew no bounds.

If Trevor was your friend, then, count yourself blessed. On meeting, he would always enquire about your well-being. If you told him that you were under the weather, Trevor would never try to chivvy you up. Rather, he’d respond thoughtfully, and with realism: ‘Mm … that sounds very unpleasant. I’m sorry to hear that. I’ll pray for you’. You were confident that he took your condition seriously. He’d take time to write to you with recommendations about music, books, films, and exhibitions that might be of interest. Trevor was neither opinionated, nor judgemental, nor censoriousness, nor vindictive. And he could keep a confidence entrusted to him as secure as gold in the Fort Knox bullion depository.

I’d hazard that Trevor would want to be remembered as a man of faith and as an artist, foremost. And, moreover, as one who’d kept faith with himself and others. While dogged by complex challenges to his health, Trevor maintained his course without either self-pity or turning back. He never entertained any excuse to throw in the towel. Trevor bequeaths to us a remarkable example of tenacity and fortitude in the face of great difficulty. In the words of the Lord whom he followed, Trevor’s encouragement to us who remain would be: ‘Go and do thou likewise’.

_{Cover image: Trevor Sewell, ‘Untitled 6.11.2024’, digital image.}

See also: Intersections (archive);  Diary (September 15, 2018 – June 30, 2021); Diary (July 16, 2014 – September 4, 2018); John Harvey (main site); John Harvey: Sound; Facebook: The Noises of Art; X; Bluesky; Instagram; Archive of Visual Practice