Three leading Welsh artists unite for summer exhibition

Three Royal Cambrian Academy artists have come together for the collective’s newest exhibition, showcasing landscapes, personal reflections and imaginative worlds.

The Royal Cambrian Academy, with a new Gallery Manager and Education & Engagement Officer, will feature the “highly prestigious Artists of Wales”, Jan Gardner RCA, George Drought RCA and Peter Welford RCA, at their June exhibition.

Jan Gardner, born and brought up in north Wales, joined the Royal Cambrian Academy in 2015. At the exhibition she will showcase works from a new collection, Untethered.

She said: “The last year has had a great impact on my working life. My marriage ended after 31 years. My work, therefore has offered my own personal respite and departure from the realities I face on a weekly level. My practice has always been a solace from the world.

“The colour and decorative content is intuitive and I love the process of manipulating the colours upon the surface, immersed in the vehicle of colour and personal associations, I add to this, new fragments blended from my imagination and memory.

“The magic of the unseen, embracing the fragility and strength of this life, for that reason my art has always been a personal journey.

“These impressions and visual expressive poems are explored and anchored in a highly personal narrative about my inner world, dreamscapes and emotion for each intuitively composed frame. I work on paper, canvas and board with high pigmented water based media.”

Also featured in the exhibition is London-born artist Peter Welford. Now living and working in the Conwy Valley, Peter joined the Academy in 2018.

Exhibiting under the title Uncertain Certainties, he said of the work: “Although my paintings are representational, my art has nothing to do with realism.

“Rather, I attempt to construct a parallel, dream-like world taken from nature, forming a collage of the components of observed reality. I thereby create a virtual world in which my allegories and commentaries are those of idealised beauty, yet charged with psychological tension.

“The harmony of colouring and a seductive technical finish are designed to counter the (often) unsettling subject matter. Traditional themes are addressed anew to examine their relevance in a world of material dependence and spiritual confusion.”

Sir Simon Jenkins added: “Peter Welford intends his art to be seen as a mirror. If its reflection is not always palatable, so be it. These paintings are not comforting salon pictures, but rather meant as a form of journalism. Their themes are provocative and sometimes political, not soliloquies but dialogues with the viewer.

“The allegorical nature of many of the subjects, and the veiled symbolism which lies within each painting, makes that dialogue the more rewarding. The more one looks, the more one finds.”

Finally, the exhibition will also feature George Drought, exhibiting under the title ‘Urban Studies.’

George explained: “In this selection of works I have chosen to show a few odd pictures that have little hope of being displayed on living room walls. They are personal statements not offered for critical judgement.

“In the main the work is straightforward topographical drawing which I enjoyed doing – buildings and towns which I enjoyed looking at, perhaps a little devoid of people.

“When younger and fitter I liked to work out of doors, re-acting to what I saw – an important part of drawing for me. At 85 however, that era has gone. My latest production is the only portrait in the exhibition.”

The Royal Cambrian Academy, located at Crown Lane, Conwy, North Wales, LL32 8AN, opened the exhibition on Wednesday 3 June.