Happy St David’s Day
Ceri Richards
Ceri Richards
La Cathédrale engloutie: Silver Grey, 1963
Oil on canvas
152 x 152 cm
4ft 11 ⅞ x 4ft 11 ⅞ in.
One of the most important draughtsmen, painters and printmakers of his generation, Ceri Richards’ late paintings display immense energy, imagination, exuberance and atmospheric use of colour. Ceri Richards (1903-1971) was born in Dunvant, near Swansea, to a Welsh speaking-family. He represented Wales in so many ways; the landscape, the light, the literature, and his deep connection with music. This is especially relevant in La Cathédrale engloutie: Silver Grey, which was inspired by the 24 Préludes from Debussy. "Music" Richards noted in 1960 "is specially significant to me and moves parallel with my love of and activity of painting - continually".
Ceri Richards began his training as an apprentice electrician, where he studied technical drawing, before enrolling full time at Swansea College of Art. His first solo exhibition was held in 1930, at the Gynn Vivian Art Gallery, Swansea. From 1933, he worked on a series of relief constructions and assemblages which were described by John Rothenstein as ‘original creations of rare order, and unlike anything else done in Britain at the time’. In 1962, Richards exhibited at the Venice Biennale, and was an Artist Trustee at the Tate from 1958-1965. Over the years, Ceri Richards’ work has been subject to numerous major solo exhibitions, including at the Whitechapel Gallery, London; Kunstnernes Hus, Oslo, Finland; Arnolfini, Bristol, and two major retrospectives at the Tate (1981) and at the National Museum of Wales (2002). In 1960, Ceri Richards received a CBE, and in 1961 was awarded the National Eisteddfod Gold Medal for excellence in Fine Art. The New Art Centre held an exhibition of Ceri Richards’ ‘Late Paintings’ in the gallery from 21 November 2015 – 31 January 2016.
David Nash
David Nash
Black Flame Column, 2010
Oak, charred
500 x 106 x 106 cm
16ft 5 x 3ft 6 x 3ft 6 in.
David Nash is an internationally renowned artist who works primarily with wood: growing, cutting, carving and charring it. His monumental work, Black Flame Column is indicative of his use of the transformative process of charring, where wood, a soft, warm and familiar material, is radically changed into black carbon. The trunk becomes a sculptural monolithic column, where space, scale and time are strangely augmented.
David Nash (b. 1945) trained at Kingston College of Art and subsequently at Chelsea School of Art, graduating in 1970. His first solo exhibitions were held at Queen Elizabeth Hall, York and Oriel, Bangor, Wales in 1973. In 1999, he was both elected a Royal Academician and appointed a Research Fellow at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle. Nash’s work has been exhibited globally, with major shows including The Condition of Sculpture, Hayward Gallery, London (1975); British Art Now: An American Perspective, Soloman R Guggenheim Museum, New York, USA (1980); Aspects of British Art Today, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum (1982) and has been the focus of retrospectives at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (2010), Kew Gardens (2012), and the Museum of Cardiff (2019).
Adam Buick
Adam Buick
Massive Intertidal Jar, 2020
Stoneware with Waun LLodi clay splash and a Nuka glaze
Height: 85 cm / 2ft 9 ⅖ in.
Adam Buick uses the form of Korean moon jars as a canvas to engage in an ongoing dialogue with the Welsh landscape and the transience of human endeavour. Buick uses locally dug clay and stone inclusions which emerge from the smooth porcelain surface. The landscape, to which Buick is so connected, is emotionally and literally laced through his thrown jars. In Massive Intertidal Jar and Large Intertidal Jar, the surface is decorated with splashes of Waun Llodi clay, dug from the moor below Carn Treliwyd that overlooks Adam's studio. Change and metamorphosis are poignant narratives in Buick’s work, as the glazes and firing temperatures allow unpredictable transformations to occur in the same way that the landscape and environment shape us as people.
Adam Buick received a BA joint Honours in archaeology and anthropology at Lampeter University in 2001, before studying at the West Wales School of Art in Carmarthen (2003) and the Crafts Council of Ireland Ceramics Design and Skills Course (2004-2006). He has since received numerous awards for his work including the Creative Wales Award from the Arts Council of Wales (2017), the Jerwood Maker Open (2013) and Ceramic Review Award (2013). Adam Buick has exhibited internationally. Selected solo and group shows include Grounding, Ruthin Crafts Centre, Wales (2023), Atavism, Hauser & Wirth, Somerset (2019); Things of Beauty Growing, at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (2018) and the Yale Center for British Art (2017); Collect, Saatchi Gallery, London and Ceramic Art London, RCA (2012). Adam Buick lives and works in Llanferran, Wales.
Buick’s work is currently on display at the V&A, London until September 2025, as part of British Studio Pottery and the V&A. A solo exhibition of Adam Buick’s ceramics will open at Contemporary Ceramics, London on March 6th.
Meical Watts
Meical Watts
Lleu Llaw Gyffes, 1997
Blue granite glacial boulder
77 x 112 x 31 cm
30 x 44 x 12 in.
Meical Watts was primarily a letter cutter, and frequently references Welsh mythology and poetry. In this piece, he has depicted Lleu Llaw Gyffes: a warrior, magician and hero who appears prominently in the fourth branch of the Mabinogi, or Pedair Cainc Y Mabinogi, the earliest prose stories in the literature of Britain. The fourth branch focuses on the tale of Math fab Mathonwy, and tells the story of Lleu’s birth, life, marriage, death, resurrection, and accession to the throne of Gwynnedd. Watts has carved Lleu with wings, referencing a tale in which he transforms into an eagle in an attempt to evade an attack from Gronw Pebr, the lord of Penllyn.
Born in 1962, Meical Watts studied Fine Art at Norwich School of Art in the early 1980s. In 1985, he started an apprenticeship with sculptor and letter cutter Jonah Jones. Watts has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions across the UK and abroad. He uses traditional carving methods, and many of his processes have not changed since the Middle Ages; most of his work is done by hand, with a hammer and chisel, files and rifflers. He uses local slates and ancient granites, stones that have been carried by glaciers and shaped by ice and water. As a result, Watts’ sculpture has a timeless quality, transcending historical chronology, and deeply embedding itself in the Welsh landscape.
David Jones
Hill-rhythms: David Jones + Capel-y-ffin
Text by Peter Wakelin
2023
Published by The Brecknock Art Trust and Grey Mare Press
Paperback
175 x 250 mm
ISBN: 978-1-9996474-6-9
Published in association with the exhibition: Hill-rhythms: David Jones + Capel-y-ffin, 1 July - 29 October 2023.
David Jones (1895-1974) was one of the greatest British artists of the twentieth century: a painter, printmaker, illustrator, poet and essayist. Kenneth Clark, T. S. Eliot and Igor Stravinsky among others called him a genius.
This book centres on the time Jones spent in the mid-1920s at Capel-y-ffin in the Black Mountains, which he described as ‘a new beginning’ in his art. Aged 29 and recovering from the trauma of the trenches, he developed a fluid new style inspired by the ‘hill-rhythms’ of the mountains and the ‘counter-rhythms’ of the rivers. At the same time, he produced some of the finest illustrated books of the century and found intellectual purpose in a Roman Catholic community of like-minded artists and craftspeople. His work continued to develop but his memories of Capel-y-ffin remained in his imagination as both artist and writer for the rest of his life.
Dr Peter Wakelin has published books on the artists Charles Burton, Roger Cecil, Falcon Hildred and Sally Moore and has written for Art Review, Modern Painters and The Guardian. Among his exhibitions are Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art at the Royal West of England Academy and Romanticism in the Welsh Landscape at MoMA Machynlleth. He was formerly Director of Collections at Amgueddfa Cymru-Museum Wales and Secretary of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales. He is President of the Contemporary Art Society for Wales.