I have been painting Bannau Brycheiniog – the official name for the Brecon Beacons since 2023 – for a while now. Living in flat Cardiff as a student for a decade, I used to enjoy seeing Carphilly Mountain off in the distance. At weekends, I would catch the local train to Taffs Wells and climb Garth Mountain (Subject of the 1995 Hugh Grant film “The Englishman who Went up a Hill but down a Mountain“). Those mountains gave me a sense of very different landscape nearby.
The Mountains of south and mid-Wales was my favourite destination for days out and holidays. When I first started painting seriously, the Beacons were a favourite subject matter. When I used to sell prints on Artfinder back in 2013, “Crick in the Snow” was very popular. I loved painting the lines of hedges and trees. I have a fascination with layers of things – fields, hedgerows, houses. I think I enjoy seeing them spread out at a distance. It gives me a better sense of the toptography of the physical landscape. How the land undulates; rises and falls. I can look at a 2D images a create a 3D image in my mind’s eye.
I have explored different approaches to this subject matter. I have used a design-style – where the colours are flat and very simplied.
To a more less-stylish and realistic approach, with softer colours.
To a semi-realist approach with elements of stylished flat colours.
Recently, I was drawn to painting Wales again. I was looking to paint small landscapes using acrylic gouache. Using a different medium produced interesting results. The Acrylic Gouach is chalky in nature and tends to result in pastel shades. I like this. I found that the lighter colours (pale yellows and light greens) needed several layers to get the strength of colour I wanted. Each painting was a surprise to me. They did not turn out the way I expected but I liked them beacuse the softer colours were more respresentative of the landscape than the oils I used in the past.
Recent paintings of Bannau Brycheiniog (Brecon Beacons) – in Acrylic Gouache.
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