Painting your Wales: Louise Collis & Forever Young Series: Elizabeth Wall

Back in 2015, Abergavenny based artist Louise Collis travelled the country taking inspiration from dramatic vistas to paint a landscape every single day for a year. It culminated in a highly successful exhibition of 365 pieces documenting her trav els, the changing seasons and weather conditions. Louise is now set to launch her new solo exhibition for 2017. ‘Painting Your Wales’ comprises of paintings of locations around Wales suggested entirely by the public.

Her appeal for ideas resulted in a wealth of suggestions: favourite viewpoints, tourist attractions, coastal locations and holiday resorts to hometowns, places inspired by childhood memories and an array of other emotiv e connections. The project took Louise to both new locations and familiar territories often revisiting old favourites such as Southerndow n, and some just a few miles from her home such as Llandegw edd Reservoir and Keepers Pond. There w ere locations close to home but still new to her such as Tal-y- Maes bridge in the Black Mountains and the Elan Valley, and some to challenge her such as Port Talbot.

Louise said that: ‘Pembrokeshire was so popular it took two trips to cover the locations suggested including St Govans Chapel, Tenby, St Anne’s Head, Strumble Head and the Preseli Hills. To make sure I covered as many of the suggested Snowdonia locations as possible I stayed in a boathouse on the Mawddach Estuary for a week. I painted the high peaks of Snowdonia including Crib Goch and Tryfan and travelled to the north coast of the LLyn Peninsula to paint Dinas Dinlle calling at Porthmadog and Criccieth on the way back to the boathouse’.

The exhibition comprises of ov er 60 oil paintings and includes a mix of medium and large framed paintings plus many small unframed w orks.

Also opening in the gallery is w ork by textile artist Elizabeth Wall who made a name for herself in Y Galeri Caerffili’s Open Art Exhibition earlier this year w ith her quirky Forever Young Series. Her ageing Punk, Goth & Skater boy w ere certainly conv ersation pieces and brought many a smile to v isitors’ faces. Shereturnswithaprofileofnewworkwhichincludes Punk Old Lady, Mod, Biker and Teddy Boy.

BothexhibitionscanbeseenatYGaleriCaerffilifrom5Sept–14Oct. MeetLouiseCollis and Elizabeth Butler in the gallery on Saturday 9 September from 12 noon – 3pm.

Y Galeri Caerffili is open 10am – 5pm, Tuesday – Saturday. Free admission.