Cwm Cywarch

I moved with my family to Wales from Devon in 1966 and I have lived in Pembrokeshire since 1997. I studied graphics in Bristol and returned to painting, a passion since I was very young, in 1997. I have always liked being in the landscape and spend most of my spare time exploring. With a graphic eye I seek out compositions and assemble the components to capture the emotions I feel at the start of the creative process – the composition must have something out of the ordinary to it, a sense of drama or some deep emotional quality. I am very fond of flowing curves, influenced by the excitement of following tracks and discovery of something new around the corner.

I paint and draw in various media and my images are sourced from sketches, imagination and photography, but primarily from being there, often time and time again. With a love for reading maps, I often seek out locations far from the mainstream. Some locations in Wales have a magnetism that draws me back continually. There is a Welsh word that expresses my subjects better than any English equivalent – hiraeth.