Ffocws #1

Isabel Adonis, artist and writer was born in London in 1951 to a Welsh home maker and the well known West Indian artist, painter and writer.

She was educated in the Sudan and in Wales, attended John Bright’s Grammar School and UCNW Bangor where she studied Educational Studies.

She exhibited online supported by The Weavers Factory of Uppermill near Manchester in a very successful online exhibition, Scraps, Patches and Rags.

She is winner of the Wales Book of the Year 2023 for her And…a Memoir of my Mother.

Born in Bethesda, Gwynedd, Julian grew up in Reading, England, studied at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff, and since then has worked largely with words: first with Penguin Books, and more latterly with student writers at universities both in the United Kingdom and abroad.

Julian works with grey lino as it affords a delicacy akin to engraving and also the opportunity to work at a scale which would be difficult to achieve with wood blocks. He describes his approach to the lino as carving rather than cutting. He is drawn to contrast and inconstancy, to the drama of sea, and mountain, and sky, and works largely with black ink as it accents contrast.

As a poet, much of Julian’s work focuses upon transience, the fleeting moment of things. Julian states “I find it somewhat paradoxical to now be working in a visual medium that holds things beyond their moment. It is the making rather than the image that interests me: the possible, the unseen. In producing a print, I work from photos, sketches, and my own writing, and I spend a considerable amount of time on small studies in lino before tackling the larger piece. That said, rarely do I have a complete sense of what I want to achieve before I begin to carve. The gouges talk and I follow them: I like to feel from them what together we will do. That which remains thereafter is a fraction of all that was possible. A beautiful husk.”

Ken’s work refers to the Welsh Landscape as a metaphor to express a range of human emotions and spiritual impulses. This recent body of work refers to the natural landscape around Sychnant Pass as well as Ancient Sites found in Anglesey and their reference to man`s place in the landscape.

Ken studied Fine Art at Liverpool Polytechnic 1975 –1977 and at Deakin University in Melbourne Australia for his Master of Arts in 1995-1997. A practising artist for over forty years, he has exhibited work in both Europe and Australia.

I am a contemporary Welsh visual artist working from a studio on the coast of North Wales.

As a Generation X’er I find myself referencing the pop culture and music of the 80’s & 90’s where I grew up, whilst also absorbing the rebellious nature of Punk and the brashness of Americana. I have a Masters in Fine Art (2019-2021) which concentrated on thoughts of motherhood & what it means to be masculine or feminine in the way you work and portray yourself.

My practice focuses on the fracturing and fragmenting of self that occurs with the advent of children. With its endless mental, physical and emotional load and my attempt to wrestle time and space to be an artist. I look at the stereotypes of both. The life of a 49 year old peri-menopausal woman with 3 children & a surprise grandchild all squashed into the family home has fed the feeling of chaos and plate spinning that I depict on my surfaces (there’s nothing like life imitating art & vice versa for content!). A visual voice that echos the madness of juggling an over full life where I feel like a cake that doesn’t quite have enough slices to go around all the people at the party. The drudge of domesticity and the fight to be something else.

In 1972 I studied at Newcastle University, Fine Art Department, which led to a BA (hons) Fine Art degree. I gained a PGCE Art Teachers Certificate from Cardiff University in 1980. I moved to North Wales from Cardiff in 1981.

I have spent many years walking the coast, and climbing the mountains with sketchbook in hand, and like all artists, search for an abstraction that carries the emotive feel of ‘plein air’ drawing and painting, making numerous oil and watercolour sketches.
In this way my own work has become more abstracted with the discovery of the combined forces of nature and its intrinsic malevolent power pitted against our own weaknesses. I also produce small sculptures based on my landscapes.

I teach drawing and painting to numerous art societies, as well as for the Royal Cambrian Academy, as an Associate Member. I am also a member of the Royal Watercolour Society of Wales.