Many Malmesbury people have fond memories of Colin. You may remember him out and about sketching, perhaps in the Abbey churchyard, at the cricket pitch, or down the Rec. He captured many a Malmesbury character or scene, before a passer-by was beguiled into conversation with him.
Jackdaw readers may remember the wonderful illustrations which graced the front cover of the earliest copies. You may be one of the people for whom he made one of the numberless posters and banners advertising local events, shop signs, or even number plates, either free or for a token fee. You may have had your portrait drawn by him for a pound for charity at a fête.
Fans of the Athelstan Players will have seen the props he made, and witnessed his hilarious comic acting. He was one of the people who gave Malmesbury its Art Society, and you may have bought one of his drawings in one of their exhibitions, or been guided by him during one of their evening classes. The youth of Malmesbury, present and past, have good reason to remember him for his willing help at the Youth Club, or just as someone they could talk to.
Older Jackdaws will remember him fondly as the art teacher in the Grammar School in the early 1950s who couldn't control the class, but who inspired them nonetheless. We, his six children, and our children, remember him as a funny and eccentric father and grandfather whose open-mindedness led some of us on to successful careers in Art, or simply whose ability to enter into the world of the imagination made our childhood magical and our adult lives creative.
Colin Forward was trained at Cardiff Art School, where his greatest influences were his hero, Picasso, and his teacher Ceri Richards. He and his wife Sylvia, also an artist, came to Malmesbury in the early 1950s. Always serious about being an artist, Colin had studios at Tower House, in an outbuilding next to Abbey Mill, in Mr. Darcy's summer house at the end of the Tuppenny Tube, and at no. 2 Burnham Road. In the latter, a small, dilapidated cottage which Colin rented for 30 shillings a week, he painted cubist oils of nude ladies upstairs, while downstairs were blocks of Bath stone, conveyed there by pram from the council road maintenance depôt on the Brokenborough road, which we children would attempt to carve.
One rare example of his early work is the huge picture he painted in 1953 of the High Street, Malmesbury. This was done from sketches drawn from the back seat of the bus on his way to work at Ecko. It hung first in our bathroom, then in the passage of our house at Hobbes Close, before being given to his friend, Jackdaw founder, Pete Clarke.
Colin was an excellent and skilled technical draughtsman, who drew 'blue prints' for a living. This technique is evident in his early drawings on tracing paper, including one of Hannah Twynnoy, and in his drawings of buildings. Architecture was always of great interest to him, and many of his drawings betray an almost obsessive interest in architectural detail. He spent many hours drawing Luce's Brewery (the former Linolite building) during its demolition in the early 1990s.
Colin always hankered after becoming a cartoonist, and sent many of his attempts to newspapers, most of which were rejected. His cartoons were complex and often impenetrable, but have their own charm. Perhaps one of his most successful was his version of the Mappa Mundi, drawn for the Malmesbury Carnival Times, but there is also a delicious rendering of the late lamented open-air swimming pool its heyday.
Colin Forward, though not a great artist by any means, was a Malmesbury artist for fifty years. The body of work he left is full of fascination for Malmesbury people: I hope you enjoy it!
Viève Forward
