Category: Wales

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The Back Lane Gallery – Opening Soon!

This is a mock “How to….” video detailing the steps in building an art studio/gallery in one’s back garden.

As I need more room to paint (I paint in my attic art studio at present) as my paintings get increasingly bigger, my husband project managed the building of an art complex at our home so that artlovers can visit for a private viewing of my artwork in the art gallery and also buy paintings, prints and so on from his log cabin office.

I have sold dozens of pieces of artwork this way and really enjoy meeting artlovers who love my artwork. Having a viewing space is designed to help artlovers make that final decision about buying my artwork.

It also helps some artlovers to meet the artist and to get to know who they will be buying art from. It all adds to the enriching experience of buying art.

Artlovers also often like to hear about the inspiration behind certain paintings and this brings the artwork to life. Although my paintings are professionally photographed some artlovers simply like to see the paintings in front of their very eyes. If you want to book a date to visit me at my home then contact me and arrange an appointment. We will be happy to see you!

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Craftsman Gallery

These two rather complementary paintings of Tenby are now being exhibited in the Craftsman Gallery, St Helens Road, Swansea.

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Crick in the Snow – A Brecon Beacons painting

Crick in the snow (SOLD)

I love painting snow, whether brillant midday sun, blue-tinged, snow or pinky sunset snow. I love how blues and pinks hover above the snowy white. I love the snow’s power to transform, to turn a plain town into a lovely town, and a lovely town in something quite majestic. In “Crick in the Snow, the lovely village of Crickhowell in the Brecons is transformed into a picture-postcard beauty by the snow and the dramatic background of the snow glistering hills.

I live by the sea where the salty sea erodes most heavy snow drifts. Thus I have to travel inland to the Welsh Valleys and beyond to find my snow-laden landscapes. In this painting I love the intricacy of the hedgerows climbing up the hills, the lacy threads of winter hedges, the patterns, and the line and shapes. It has a “brueghelian” Christmas feel. All that is missing is the sleighing children and swirling skates. I love the warm colours of the houses in the foreground contrasting with the cold blues in the distant countryside. The habitable back-lit with the inhabitable. This heightens the feeling of Christmas, all wrapped up in each other’s shops and homes, and lives; reassuringly, comfortably, necessarily away from the icy outside, the outer reaches, around this human fire of company. This is a painting of a winter community as well as winter community more generally.

Buy large mounted signed prints here 

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Up Landeilo Way

Oil painting on linen canvas – I use a linen canvas with a white covering for certain types of painting such as landscapes set in Wales as there is a particular type of “Welsh light” that can be captured accurately on this type of canvas. It is extraordinary how a canvas is so conducive to a certain “national light” but all light is different depending on where one is located in the world. My husband hails for the north of Ireland where the light is brighter and more shrill, high pitched, more crisply blue white, whereas in Wales, it is often slightly or noticeably softer and in certain places tinged with warmer yellowy white. Although in this painting which is heading towards West Wales, and towards the Irish Sea the light has become more crisp and slightly tinged with blue. One can almost feel the lung filling fresh air in the blowing clouds and nasal tinging blue sky.

llandeilo way
Llandeilo Way (SOLD)
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Tenby Tide

This is quite an unusual painting of Tenby into that the tide is fully in, and the boats bob on the lapping multi coloured strips of water, which add a crispness to the West Walian light and a rich vibrancy to the coloured Tenby terraced houses, which cwtch the Harbour and lighten the spirit with a sea-salted breathiness.

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Tenby Tide

Buy mounted limited edition print here (free UK postage)

(29 x 20 cm print only) with mount 40 x 30 cm

[wpecpp name=”Tenby Tide A4 print” price=”30.00″]

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Up Cwmdonkin

Another ‘refractionist’ painting. The title takes it’s name from the actual park, Cwmdonkin Park, which is where the poet and composer of words Dylan Thomas walked an displayed as a child and adolescent, maybe imagined and constructed as a young man, and dreamed big dreams. His family home hugged the side of the park, on the steep of the hill running alongside the park. Perhaps he extended his journey to the Uplands Tavern this way or then again, perhaps not!Image

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Down Cwmdonkin

This is an example of my ‘refractionist’ technique at work as I build up the painting, first from breaking down a photo into areas of colour, which I sketch in as mainly black and white, gently adding colours that I feel will represent light on colour at different depths of perception. Then I add to these ‘segments’ individual colours, reflecting light being refracted on different areas and at different distances. Slowly I build up these complementary spectral colours, constantly having to retreat some distance from the canvas to inspect the painting to see if it is coming together or being constructed in a coherently plausibe way. Each segment helps construct the perception of the scene, in this case, building up a picture of a path through a park. In fact, this park is Cwmdonkin Park where the great poet and composer of words, Dylan Thomas used to walk as a boy and young man. His family home is minutes away, hugging the side of this park. The final painting is quite expressionist but also conveys a spectral, refracted light spectrum hence the name ‘refractionist’ as it is the combination of light falling on various materials at different distances that I am attempting to ‘express’ or as my sister, described it, a ‘stain glass’ effect. This is apt as I love paintings that somehow expresses the extraordinary in the ordinary, the supra natural in the natural, the divine in the mundane, hence the spectral feeling I am attempting to communicate through the painting. The fleeting moment of wonder or awe when we walk into a sunlit and stain glassed church almost.

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Perpetual Light

“Perpetual Light”

People have commented variously how this painting “captures sunshine”, “reminds me of hope”…and sometimes comments inform you about what the painting evokes in others and in a sense what it is about, almost.. The subject material here is one of my very favourite chapels in Wales. Not only is it the smallest but I also love it’s crooked bell tower. Mostly, I love how it is bathed in traditional Welsh white, unusual in that most chapels are not these days. This white helps catch the brillance of the sunshine, which puts it in start contrast to the “gloom” of the gravestones.Personally, unlike most perhaps, I love graveyards, particularly old ones; I love the gravestones and how they tell a thousand stories of people who have passed on but still “alive” in the memories and stories left behind. Some other comments have mentioned how the painting rises above the death association. I think it has done so because there is an intrinsic hope in sunshine isn’t there – that is what I have tried to capture in the sun.  It is also clear that light and dark need each other, shadow and brilliance. Despair and hope. Beyond the graves there is a light, and the title of the painting points to a Christian reference, mentioned in relation to those who have moved on, “Let perpetual light shine upon him/her…”, so there is hope in this message, for some, of eternal light beyond the grave.Image