Llanfaelrhys
12 x 9.5" Oil
£850
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Artists A-Z
Keith Bowen
Keith Bowen was born in Wrexham, Denbighshire in 1950, and lives in North Wales. He studied Art and Design at Manchester Polytechnic from 1969-72. In 1997, he was awarded the Honorary Fellowship of the University of Wales.
Keith has exhibited extensively and received justifiable acclaim. Amongst a host of awards, he has twice received the Gold Medal for Fine Art at The Royal National Eisteddfod of Wales, and in 1992 he was elected a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy. Two Royal Mail Stamps and two books 'Snowdon Shepherd' and 'Among the Amish' – feature his paintings of the countryside.
His work is in public collections in The National Library of Wales, The National Trust, National Postal Museum, Oriel Ynys Môn, Denbighshire County Council and Leicestershire County Council.
"Ancient people believed that if you walked too fast, you would lose your soul. Well, that's my excuse for dawdling around the hills, going ever slower. Mountains are not for marching over but for being amongst; as W.H. Murray, the Scottish writer and mountaineer wrote: "Find beauty. Be still."
The subjects that I am drawn to are the unremarked and forgotten fragments of a "fallen world": sheepfolds, trackways, paths, walls and gates. They are the decaying and neglected remnants of former times, testament to an outmoded life but imbued with the memories of a people who have been before. In such places of beautiful wildness are they now remembered.
Where there are only streams, rocks, stunted trees and weather, one can still draw analogies: here the solitary, twisted thorn tree clings to its thin earth with a tightening tenacity, becoming an emblem for the people of these wild, Welsh places."
As Edward Thomas wrote: "A land of rocks and trees Nourished on wind and stone"
Another poet, W.H.Auden wrote: "Poetry makes nothing happen"
I believe that painting does the same, so long as you find the poetry."
This last exhibition here (September 2011) included paintings of Welsh rivers, mountain streams and hill farmers as well as some scenes from agricultural shows. As a central feature of the exhibition Keith will present a stunning series of small oil paintings depicting the beautiful churches of Llŷn, many of which link the ancient pilgrimage route to Enlli (Bardsey Island).
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