Welsh Life

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2nd – 30th April 2022

 

"I wasn’t born in Wales, but despite having lived away from this country many times, “Hiraeth” has always called me back to my adopted home.

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I am so lucky that my unusual, Far Eastern art form has enabled me to portray the nuances of Welsh life in a slightly different way to more traditional, Western painting techniques.

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I am inspired by the seemingly mundane  street scenes or truly breathtaking natural imagery of our spectacular beaches, shop fronts and surfers, powerful Welsh rugby players and the majesty of our necessary industrial landscape.

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I have been a batik artist since the 1970’s, learning the technique on my specialist art teaching course at Swansea College of Art. I have taught all ages and levels whilst exhibiting regularly during my career, with work in public and private collections around the world.

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Batik is the art of wax-resist dyeing, mainly on cloth. It is very popular in Indonesia, where it is part of an ancient tradition. It is an exciting medium, but painting with hot wax is dangerous and I often burn myself. The thought process needed is similar to screen printing but only one image is produced. It is smelly and messy but the results are always a wonderful surprise"