O dan yr wyneb: Meinir Mathias returns with stirring new (and old) works

Stephen Price

Celebrated Welsh artist, Meinir Mathias, has returned with an introspective exhibition, offering audiences a rare glimpse into the private world of her studio and sketchbooks.

Titled ‘O dan yr wyneb’ (Beneath the surface) this intimate showcase at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery unveils a rarely seen side of Mathias’s practice, featuring unpublished works from her private sketchbooks and studio archives.

Presented in dialogue with the museum’s historic collection of works by Gwen and Augustus John; pioneering Welsh artists who chronicled the lives of musicians, travellers, and bohemian communities in the last century, Mathias’s exhibition offers a contemporary counterpoint.

While her well-known oil paintings reimagine Wales’s cultural past through vivid and colourful narratives. This exhibition shifts focus to her present.

Etchings, delicate drawings, and candid paintings that capture fleeting moments, and portraits of her own contemporaries: family, friends, fellow artists and travellers who have helped to shape her creative world.

Barddoniaeth

This exhibition gives way to the honest quiet poetry of everyday life that fuel her artistic vision. It is not a departure from her celebrated style, but rather a window into the unfiltered foundations of her practice.

Mathias’s connection to Pembrokeshire’s landscapes, and stories remains central.

With family ties and childhood connections to the Preseli Hills, she was drawn to Tenby (a place explored on family trips and Sunday school outings) to stage this exhibition. The coastal gallery’s rugged setting mirrors the raw intimacy of her sketches and etchings. Though stylistically distinct from her usual historical scenes, these pieces share their DNA: attention to detail, a love of storytelling, and a commitment to capturing the soul of Wales.

By sharing space with Gwen and Augustus John, Mathias draws a throughline between generations, honouring their legacy of documenting creative communities while offering her own contemporary ode to artistic kinship.

Meinir told Nation.Cymru: “This exhibition shows a collection of ink drawings, etchings and sketchbooks  along with personal objects from my home and studio.

“I am sharing the space with the work of historical welsh Artists Gwen and Augustus John and the layout is really interesting- curated much like a collection in a museum setting.

The setting for this museum is so special and worth a visit , it is perched on the edge of the peninsula over looking the north and south beaches with a direct  view across to Caldey Island.

Its small rugged path leading up to the building is like taking a step back in time. It brings back  memories of going on trips to Tenby as a child.

Rewarding

Included in this show are copper plate etching prints, small portraits of friends , family , artists and studies of people from the Romany traveller community that Meinir spent time with recently.

Meinir shared: “The curator showed me a small etching that Augustus had created of a Romany woman, and it  reminded me of some old photographs I have of a Welsh romany lady who was friends with my great- grandmother.

“I decided to spend some time with this community and to create my own studies and drawings from a contemporary viewpoint.  Some of these are on display in the exhibition.”

She added: “Like the title ‘beneath the surface’ it shows some of my thinking, studies and inspiration for characters and stories. I have a series of larger ink drawings too which include symbolic folk references such as the mari Lwyd as well as Celtic saints and deities.”

Several sketchbooks will be on display too, going back to the mid 90s, sharing space with pieces quite different to those we’ve come to expect from her.

We asked Meinir about the other styles on show. She said: “I have always used the discipline of drawing.. it’s how every painting starts, but perhaps it’s the first time I have presented them in this way as a whole collection.

“I also studied print making alongside fine art painting for my Degree and Masters. It is not a move away from my usual figurative paintings, in fact I’m steadily working on my largest body of paintings to date in preparation for a major show in Ffin y Parc next May.”

“Visiting the Museum earlier this year and seeing Gwen and Augustus John’s beautiful collection of etchings and drawings; portraits of their peers brought me back to this process that I love and it really underpins everything.

“To study people, figures, faces. Telling a story through portraiture and the slow process of copper plate etching, building form and tone through mark-making, seeing the image appear after being placed in the etching solution and then the actual printing process is so rewarding.”

The moving exhibition is a must for admirers of Meinir Mathias, old and new, offering an insight into a living artist’s process and influence like few exhibitions can.

Meinir is an artist at the height of her powers, with an infinite source of inspiration and deep love of, and respect for, Wales’ rich history, folklore and fight for freedom.

Protest runs deeply across all her works – an aim, a duty even, to reignite, to reawaken, and to not let Wales’ rights and wrongs be forgotten.

The exhibition launched on Saturday 5 July at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery, and runs until 14 August – all are welcome.

A break in Tenby has never felt more essential.