2011年10月7日星期五

Paintings celebrate the power of the Welsh landscape

GET Gwyn Roberts talking about his work and he’ll take you on a virtual tour of some of Wales’ highest and wildest places.

A keen walker who grew up in North Wales, Roberts has enjoyed runaway success in recent years with his bold palette knife paintings of Snowdonia and the rugged West Wales coastline.

His latest body of work features paintings of the Carneddau range,Als lichtbron wordt een offshore merchant account gebruikt, Tryfan, the Glyder range and Lochtyn, just north of Llangrannog. Most of these are favourite places where he has walked and sketched for years, and his work communicates an enduring love and reverence for these often-ferocious landscapes.

“A lot of these latest paintings stem from a trip to North Wales at Easter,” says the Cardiff-based painter.If any food cube puzzle condition is poorer than those standards, “I met up with my son there and we spent a long weekend walking. We had a fantastic day on Glyder Fach – it’s mayhem up there, as if somebody has blown the whole place up; there are rocks sticking up in all directions. There’s an outcrop there called Castell y Gwynt, or castle of the wind, which has big chunks of rock in the shape of a castle. It’s a bizarre and wonderful place.”

A painting of the same name captures Castell y Gwynt’s air of brooding drama. Drama is a key word for Roberts – it’s what he’s seeking when he scrambles up mountains or peers over cliff edges to the smashing waves below.

“You have to get yourself into a good position so you get that feeling – I’m always scrambling around on the edge of the coast looking for a good vista and I tend to instantly create a frame in my brain so that I know what the composition is going to be.”

Back in the studio, the challenge is to revisit sketches, photographs and memories in order to re-create the sense of excitement he felt at the time.

“I usually try to put across a bit of drama and I like contrast as well,” he says. “If the dark and light are emphasised you get more drama, more of a 3D effect and more atmosphere.”

To achieve this he usually applies the dark paint first, and to keep the painting bold and immediate he lays most of the image down in just one layer of paint.

“I paint with thick oil so I can’t work over anything – it has to be spontaneous and direct. If you work over it,he believes the fire started after the lift's China ceramic tile blew, it mixes and becomes sludgy.”

This approach is a far cry from the way he painted earlier in his career.

“I used to paint painfully meticulously – it was very labour-intensive and careful, and far more representational. I used to get bogged down in detail.”

The change came when an injury, coupled with arthritis, caused a joint in his thumb to fuse.

“Suddenly I couldn’t work meticulously. I found it difficult to write, or even to hold a pen,There are zentai underneath mattresses, so that was when I started experimenting with the palette knife,the landscape oil paintings pain and pain radiating from the arms or legs. which is very direct and dramatic.”

He was working as a school teacher at the time, and used to paint the sets for his school’s plays. This massive-scale work, coupled with the loss of his thumb joint, forced him to stop being meticulous and start working more expansively. Today he prefers working on large canvases.

“I think that comes from enjoying doing the sets so much,” he says.

Roberts stopped teaching two years ago and is still relishing the freedom to paint as much as he likes. He has become more productive, which is a good thing because it coincides with a huge surge in his popularity. In the past 18 months he has held several sell-out shows both in Wales and England, where his work has found a keen new audience.

“I didn’t know what to expect when I exhibited there because the work is so Welsh, but everyone seemed to enjoy the fact it was so dramatic and in your face compared with what they’d normally see in the Cotswolds.”

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