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One of my favourite paintings by Edgar Degas is Miss La La at the Cirque Fernando. As well as being one of his boldest – it’s probably one of the most audacious compositions ever painted in the nineteenth century –…
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Saving the gannets
The jaunty oil sketch may look charming, but it conceals an ugly story. It was painted by a well-known Cardiff artist, Thomas Henry Thomas, after a visit he and three friends from the Cardiff Naturalists’ Society made to Grassholm (Gwales)…
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Kathleen Jamie’s ‘Cairn’
The old Athenian playwrights were expected to follow their three tragedies for the festival of Dionysus with a lighter ‘satyr’ play. The idea, it seems, was to take the edge off the horrors and traumas of the earlier dramas. Kathleen…
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Still life, still alive
‘Still life’ is a paradox. Can something that’s still or unmoving be alive, especially if it’s a dead creature or an inanimate object? The French equivalent, nature morte, is equally stark in its self-contradiction. But the term isn’t the only…
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Delweddu pont: Pontypridd a’r artistiaid
Mae llawer o sôn yn yr Eisteddfod Genedlaethol, a gynhelir yng nghanol Pontypridd ym Mharc Ynysangharad, am ‘bontio’ rhwng siaradwyr Cymraeg a’r mwyafrif o’r trigolion lleol sy ddim yn medru’r iaith. Perthnasol iawn yw’r metaffor, o gofio bod Pontypridd yn…
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Shakers
If you live in Swansea and you’re serious about paint, then Rabart in Gendros is the place for you. Llanelli may be Tinopolis, but Rabart is the metropolis of paint tins. It has thousands of them, stacked high with every…
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St Illtud’s Walk, day 7: Resolfen to Afan Argoed
Another nine-mile walk over hills between valleys, this time Cwm Nedd and Cwm Afan. It’s too complex and time-consuming today to take buses, our favoured means of transport, so C and I are reduced to the two-car trick, leaving one…
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Cornelius Varley again
I’ve been revisiting the miraculous drawings made by Cornelius Varley when he spent time in Dolgellau in the summer of 1803. The end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century was an age of wonder for watercolour painting…
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On shoelaces
We like to think that, even if our politics and economics show few signs of movement towards improvement, we live in an age of continuous technological refinement. Digital inventors now deliver tools like artificial intelligence that dazzle us, jaded though…
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The silent election
Has there ever been a general election studded with so many good jokes? From the very start, when Rishi Sunak destroyed his blue suit while standing in the pouring rain to announce the election, to the news that the even…