Surrealist Composition with Girl, Bell and Bird was probably painted around 1974, between Colin Middleton's two major late achievements, the Wilderness and Westerness cycles. The 1970s marked Middleton's return to an engagement with Surrealism, which he had first explored in the 1930s at a point when only a handful of artists working in Britain were committed to this movement. Middleton's early surrealist works, however, appear more emotionally inspired and more unsettling in tone, experimenting with a range of subversive Jungian imagery to explore the psychological and physical experience of a war-ravaged world. In the 1970s Middleton's surrealism seems less visceral and more self-consciously inventive, demonstrating his remarkable skill to interrelate a series of fantastical ideas to create a pictorial logic that fully engages the viewer. There is a sense of ceremony or performance in the present work. This is presented within a shallow space that still hints at a larger landscape and it appears as if the figure has emerged from the boxes beside her that form part of a drawn-in contraption that is ambiguous in its action or intention. While the bell can suggest transition amongst many other meanings, the bird is often used in Middleton's work in close conjunction with a female figure to represent their spiritual or non-physical aspects. Middleton creates a world in parallel to ours to explore ideas that transcend the physical but, as in the Wilderness Series, he sets out an intriguing puzzle without defining an answer. Dickon Hall (http://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/colin-middleton-rha-rua-mbe-1910-1983-surrealis-116-c-1c4c9ecde4)