Y Garn Goch
Bûm yna am y tro cyntaf rhywbryd tua diwedd y 1970au. Cofiaf ddilyn y lôn gul, droellog o wastatir afon Tywi, i fyny’r rhiw o bentref Bethlehem, cyn parcio’r car ar droed y llwybr. Cofiaf hefyd y waliau cerrig sychion yn amgylchynu’r ddau fryn, yn ddiamddiffyn i’r gwyntoedd o’r gorllewin – neu’n waeth, gwyntoedd dwyreiniol […]
Phil Eglin’s wobbly jugs
Haptic art is alive. Marcel Duchamp’s pale followers have failed, over the last hundred years, to snuff out the pleasure of making things with your hands. Squeezing red acrylic paint out of a tube and trailing it with a finger over a canvas still has irresistible appeal. So does mixing and shaping clay and hardening […]
Turner at Ewenny: a political artist?
Recently I’ve been looking into the strange fate of Ewenny Priory at the time of its dissolution in the 1530s and 1540s. Sooner or later anyone interested in the history of the priory can hardly escape an encounter with the remarkable watercolour of the church’s interior that JMW Turner painted in 1797, when he was […]
Are angels real?
Walking through Mumbles a few weeks ago I glanced up at the noticeboard on the Christadelphian ecclesia (Mount Zion Hall) advertising the topic for the next meeting. Normally the wording takes the form of ‘What does the Bible say about x?’, where ‘x’ is a current concern, like adultery or climate change or the colour purple. On […]
Blwyddyn Chwedlau Cymru
I’r swyddogion yn Llywodraeth Cymru sy’n gyfrifol am baratoi cynlluniau i ddenu twristiaid i Gymru, mae ‘diwylliant’ Cymru yn broblem y mae hi bron yn amhosibl dod i afael â hi. Y prawf diweddaraf o hynny yw’r ymgyrch bresennol Blwyddyn Chwedlau Cymru. Llynedd oedd ‘Blwyddyn Antur’, a ‘Blwyddyn y Môr’ oedd hi yn 2018: pynciau […]
Glenys
There’s only one person in Swansea known by everyone as ‘Glenys’. And there couldn’t be a more popular or fitting choice for the Glynn Vivian’s first big exhibition after its five-year sleep than a retrospective of the works of Glenys Cour, born in 1924 and still painting daily at the age of 92. What’s more, […]
A painting by Vivienne Williams
1 Jug You know me well enough, so you think – White, sure, handle as a band, Standing just where I was put. You think you have me taped. You’ve the advantage of greater height, Enough to see my inside’s cool blue. I sense it gives you comfort, simple me Answers to your need for […]
A letter from Kampala
A few days ago a letter came from Kampala, Uganda. It’s still lying on the table inside the front door, with its envelope. I haven’t put it in the bin for recycling, and nor have I thought about replying to it. It continues to lie there. What follows tries to explain why. The brown envelope, […]
Some books I read in 2016
If last year was a desperate time in the public world, there were plenty of comforts closer to home. As always, reading was one of them. These days I read more than I have since I was a teenager, with the added advantage that if I find a book unreadable I’m now happy, time and life […]
The new eschatology
As 2016 comes to an end the heavens are full of what Flann O’Brien’s great scientist De Selby called ‘black air’. A long night, it appears, is about to fall on two continents. In the United States a plutocratic bully and egomaniac with the crudest social and political attitudes is about to take power, unrestrained […]