The new exhibition, New Paintings by father and son artists Aneurin and Meirion Jones, was officially opened at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery on Friday.
The exhibition was opened by Alun Ifans, former headteacher at Ysgol Casmael in Puncheston, where he established an ‘Oriel’ within the school with a wide collection of original paintings by Welsh artists, including work by Aneurin and Meirion. Alun congratulated the museum for having such a fantastic exhibition by two of Wales’ foremost contemporary artists.
The exhibition features over 40 works by these two artists. Aneurin compares his life to that of a farmer, stating “An artist ploughs their own furrow; painting is very personal in terms of the pattern, the shape and the mood it creates.” His work in the exhibition highlights his continuing interest in the rural Welsh characters, many of whom he has come to recognise as ‘the last of that generation’ - older farmers chatting in rainy huddles or casting a critical eye over ponies or standing solitary in thought. There are also the Welsh cobs and mountain ponies that he has become renowned for and in 2013 one of his paintings of a Welsh cob was presented to Prince Charles at the Royal Welsh Show.
Meirion’s work is different in tone to his father’s, but it is also firmly set in West Wales.
“The starting points of the paintings are invariably something or someone glimpsed whilst travelling around the parts of West Wales which are familiar to me. There is just something about the field patterns, the play of light on the sea, the relation between two colours which sparks something that asks to be developed.”
The exhibition features works of a lone walker on Tenby Harbour, Dylan’s house in Laugharne, the drama of rain over the Preseli Mountains, a solitary cottage on Garn Fawr and also the exuberance of skinnydippers running free into the waves and horses galloping through the foam on Poppit Sands.
This superb joint sales exhibition runs until Sunday, August 13.