January at Penderyn

Concept

I used to admire the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Mark Tobey. I like the whole surface of my work to be moving and layered like theirs. I always draw from life and my drawings are quite wobbly and look like they’re drawn by hand; I also like that wobbliness in my engravings, as they’re drawn by a vulnerable human.

While practising Bach for my music studies it struck me that Bach fugues are also busy and layered, the motifs interweave joyfully, running from one hand to the other, and there is constant movement.

"Bach is always going somewhere or coming back" Carole Morgans, piano teacher

At the same time there is peace and stillness for the listener to get a glimpse of the eternal. Although some musicians say Bach wrote only dance music, he raises you out of your limitations.

Without comparing myself to Bach, I aim to uplift and bring hope and humour, besides peace and stillness. The humour is conveyed in the cutting of the engraving, in jaunty angles and unexpected composition. I don’t usually appreciate witty, overly narrative images.

Hope is glimpsed in the small, often unnoticed and mundane things we all have around us. I look a lot at David Hockney’s iPad drawings, and in fact in the last year all my sketches have been done using an iPad. Hockney celebrates the small things in his drawings - teeth in a glass, a socket in a wall, the book on the table. Having personally recovered from years of illness I also find there is much to celebrate, and it is in the small things, the things we often take for granted, that we are rescued