Wales 2009

Within this Welsh landscape painting the eye is led from the meandering stream in the foreground, across the Lake to the mountains beyond. Forming part of The Brecon Beacons National Park the mountains range is perfect subject matter. My intention is to take the viewer around the Welsh landscape painting starting and ending as if you can just walk into the painting allowing the viewer personal ownership of the scene.

The Welsh landscape painting has a very restful sense to it; very contemplative. This is the sort of view you might take in while sitting on a bench. Observe the light reflecting on the lake, a sense of a light wind and a quiet birdsong from the abundant trees and babbling stream working its way from the mountains to the lake. This creates a natural barrier separating the viewer from the rest of the watercolour painting.

The Welsh landscape painting evokes the crispness of late autumn, resonating in the feeling of cold with the early snow fall on the hills. There is again a sense of something ahead; the sky is relatively unsettled. There is also a feeling of an obstruction; of denseness within the impenetrable forest.

Perhaps no other writer or artist best embodies Wales, as Dylan Thomas; particularly in his ode ‘A child’s Christmas in Wales. ‘The silent one-clouded heavens drifted on to the sea. Now we were snow-blind travellers lost on the north hills, and vast dewlapped dogs, with flasks round their necks, ambled and shambled up to us, baying "Excelsior."’.

In recent times, the Welsh painter Kyffin Williams has gained national and international acclaim for his work on Welsh hill farmers. His unique application of paint, layered impasto with a palette knife, is now much revered and mimicked. Places of note in this beautiful country include the Celtic Manor Resort, stunningly located on the foothills of Newport. Rural mid-Wales is the setting for the Lake Country House, providing the perfect base to explore the surrounding countryside.