Category: art
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Kyffin in Bangor
This is the edited text of a public talk given in Bangor University on Wednesday 19 November 2025 about the eleven oil paintings by Kyffin Williams housed in the University. The talk was followed by a guided tour of the paintings. Diolch am y gwahoddiad i ddod i’r Brifysgol, a’r cyfle i siarad am artist…
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Things from Carmarthenshire
We’ll call him Dai Stoneface. He stares out at us with dark, gouged eyes. Someone has flattened his nose in an ancient fight, the same with the ears. Could he have been a professional boxer? Even the mouth is belligerent, the narrow lips drawn together in grim silence. As someone said, you‘d feel nervous if…
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The artist from behind
What’s happening when artists choose to portray themselves in their work? The self-portrait was an invention of the Renaissance, but it’s just as common today, in painting (Jenny Saville’s work, now on show in a big retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery, is a striking example) and in many other forms. Perhaps the most famous…
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The Tower of the Nets
How many Swansea people, when they stroll along the sea wall past the Observatory (the Tower of the Ecliptic) in the Maritime Quarter stop to look closely at the diminutive building that sits on its own on the other side of the path? (I say ‘Observatory’, but that building ceased to be the home of…
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Tigers and dragons
What connects the histories and cultures of India and Wales? As it turns out, a complex nexus of links that have intertwined for centuries and continue to do so today. This is the theme of Tigers and dragons, a truly ambitious exhibition in the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery. It’s a great visual feast for the…
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Goodbye, Paul Durcan
When the news came recently that Paul Durcan had died, I pulled from the shelf my copy of his sequence of poems, Crazy about women, published by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1991. They’re all inspired by paintings in the Gallery’s collection. Some of the poems are long, some short; some playful, others penetrating…
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Esther Grainger, artist and activist
1 Introduction Around the turn of the century, when I was working in the National Library of Wales, I came across a smallish painting, in oil on board, called ‘Pontypridd at night’. It struck me at the time as a bold and unusual work, and whenever I saw it I’d stand and admire it. From…
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Cerddwyr coll: Seosamh Mac Grianna a Hamish Fulton
Profiad cyffredin ond anochel, on’d yw e? Yn syth ar ôl ichi gyhoedd llyfr, dych chi’n dod o hyd i themâu neu bobl fyddai wedi bod ynddo, heb amheuaeth, pe baech chi wedi clywed amdanyn nhw’n gynt. Dyna a ddigwyddodd yn ddiweddar ar ôl imi ddarganfod gwaith gan y llenor o Iwerddon, Seosamh Mac Grianna,…
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Posteri’r Eisteddfod
Un o draddodiadau Eisteddfod Genedlaethol Cymru sy wedi mynd ar goll yw’r arfer o ddylunio a chyhoeddi poster arbennig i hysbysebu’r ŵyl. Yn y degawdau cyntaf o’r ugeinfed ganrif tyfodd yr arfer, ac weithiau gwahoddwyd artistiaid Cymreig o fri i greu delweddau i’r posteri. Dechreuodd y traddodiad cyn y Rhyfel Byd Cyntaf. Yn Eisteddfod Genedlaethol…
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Kenneth Rowntree paints Wales
In 1940 the government commissioned around sixty artists to record local scenes all over Britain, in order to capture a visual record of the country’s buildings and landscapes before they were transformed by the effects and aftereffects of war. The scheme, labelled ‘Recording Britain’, became a home equivalent of the war artists scheme set up…