Pass, Donald
Education: Stoke-on-Trent Regional College of Art (1947–1950) and the Royal Academy Schools in London (1951–1954).
Profession/occupation: landscape painter.
Relevant info: at a young age, Donald Pass saw an angel with a lion’s head at a roadside hedge. Later, while working in London as a painter, he saw through the window “a beautiful face which appeared to be all gold. It seemed to expand through the window and embrace the whole room.”
References: Thorne, Dr. Tony (July-August 2009). Flights of Angels. Raw Vision Magazine (: number 38).
According to Pass, one day he saw through the window of his London home ‘a most beautiful face which appeared to be all gold. It seemed to expand through the window and embrace the whole room’. Unsettled by this experience he found himself soon after in the churchyard in Cuckfield, Norfolk, where he intended to make some drawings. He sat opposite the grave of a pilot, whose commemorative stone was in the shape of the Royal Air Force wings insignia: ‘Everything began to change and a tremendous darkness surrounded me. The whole landscape, churchyard, near and distant fields, seemed filled with thousands of figures Stretching to the horizon. In the blackness was a tremendous light; large winged figures with faces like lions … A veil had been lifted and I would never again see anything in the same way: After this Pass turned away from the fashionable career he had begun to carve out for himself and for a long time found himself with few supporters.
Pete Townshend on Donald Pass:
“Donald Pass had a vision and accepted the consequences. He didn’t pretend to be normal, nor did he pretend that what he had seen had never happened. His wife completely accepted the event too, and this I believe is what helped Donald to remain sane. The two of them seem to accept this almost apocalyptic transformation from a normal painter to one of an artist of mystical function.”
references: www.donaldpass.com/artist.html
1930 England - 2010 England
