An exhibition like no other: Carl Melegari and Sally Moore unite for powerful spring show at Ffin y Parc

Stephen Price

A series of powerful new works from two of Wales’ most celebrated painters, Carl Melegari and Sally Moore, feature in Ffin y Parc Gallery’s awe-striking first show of the spring.

A firm favourite among collectors, Melagari’s latest show at Ffin y Parc features a collection of painstakingly beautiful and introspective portraits.

The work is sensual, poised and elegant. A captivating combination of precision and accident.

Carl was born in Denbigh in 1958, and he now lives and works in Bristol and has exhibited widely throughout the UK, Europe and North America.

His approach to painting explores the human form both in the urban landscape and in contemplative, unobserved isolation.

Working from life and with models in the studio, he focuses primarily on semi-abstraction within the figure while exploring the versatility and textural possibilities that oil paint provides.

Carl uses the physicality of the paint, combined with the density of his pigments to evoke the vigour of the human form and to dramatise the raw tumultuous interior.

Despite their stillness, they have an intense almost visceral physicality.

His paintings arguably focus as much on the medium of paint and how it reacts with the surface as they do on their subjects.

Carl frequently uses a muted, monochromatic palette from which vivid knots and smears of colour emerge. The constraints of his muted palette accentuate a sense of isolation, contemplation, or clinical examination.

He then applies paint liberally and without reserve, building layers, creating a topography. These accumulations, the clots and spontaneous drips of paint come both literally and metaphorically to express the personality and inner life of the sitter.

Hiraeth

Ralph Sanders from Llandudno’s Ffin y Parc, which has championed Melegari’s work since he came joined the ever-evolving roster of some of Wales’ finest artists, writes: “There is a melancholy here for sure. Longing and regret haunt these figures.”

“They are in some ways idealised, and while they are willing to be the object of our attention, they remain inscrutable, unknowable. But they are not complacent or complicit. Rather they are guarded and wary, haunted by unease and uncertainty.

“Though self-contained and self-possessed they are resigned to fragility and imperfection. Their stillness reveals an intense physicality.

“The figures seem almost to be melting, dissolving even before they are fully formed. They have an awareness of their own evanescence. The moment of balance and contentment recognisable only in its passing.”

“Carl has the ability to be both eloquent and restrained. His palette is cool and narrow. The backgrounds, whether perfectly smooth or cracked and decayed, locate his figures in spaces that are isolated and silent. Interior, private places.

“Through thickly textured paint which seems to be melting or weeping, come glimpses of colour which suggest the life and fire within, or the light from elsewhere igniting an earlobe, the breath of a breeze across a cheek. Hazy sun on closed eyelids.”

“Open and wry”

Joining Melegari for this riotous burst of spring colour is Sally Moore, who was born in Barry, in 1962.

Having trained at the Ruskin School of Fine Art , Oxford and Birmingham College of Art, Sally Moore famously won a prestigious Delfina residency which resulted in a move to London where she still lives and works.

She has received numerous awards including The Discerning Eye Critic’s award, Welsh Artist of the Year and the Abbey Scholarship at the British School in Rome.

She has exhibited at the Martin Tinney Gallery for thirty years until his retirement in 2023 having staged eleven solo exhibitions and taken part in many group shows.

In 2019, “Acting Up’,a book about her work, written by Peter Wakelin was published by Samson and Company.

Each of her paintings is a mini psychological drama, often absurd, sometimes surreal and invariable humorous. Sally herself speaks of her hope that her paintings both unsettle and amuse.

Moore is represented in many public and private collections, including the National Gallery and the national Library. This is Sally’s first exhibition at Ffin y Parc.

Each picture is a posed tableau, a caught moment full of significance, consciously theatrical and dramatic. There are strong elements of the absurd and of surrealism running through the work.

Sharing his delight in showcasing new works by Moore at Ffin y Parc for the first, but no doubt last, time, Sanders shared: “In meticulous detail and with exquisite attention to detail, Sally creates worlds full of allusions and symbols.

“They are dramatisations of her inner world, her state of mind, and her responses and reactions to the perplexing world she finds herself in. She is once a participant and an observer. Engaged and detached.

“The artist often appears as a version of her present or past self, costumed, playing a character, dramatising an idea or a question.”

“Her demeanour is open and wry, her eyes clear and observant. When she looks at us directly, her gaze is unflinching.

“Always, the detail is striking and breathtaking. The work beautifully balanced and eloquent.”

The exhibition begins on 14 March and runs until 5 April 2025, and for those who can’t make it to beautiful Llandudno in person, all works are available to view and purchase online now.