SIR KYFFIN WILLIAMS was a portraitist, a painter of North Welsh landscapes and seascapes, and an amused chronicler of his own and other people’s foibles. Rain-lashed, green-grey landscapes, stormy, slate-grey seascapes and weather-beaten, pink-grey farmers are the recurring themes of Williams’s art, sketched and, in many cases, painted outdoors in his beloved North Wales. There was never anything precious about Williams’s attitude to his art. One of his trademarks was that he would knead and model his oil paints with a palette knife, regardless of whether or not this was fashionable with the art establishment (and it was not). A doctor proposed that he take up art, and Williams did just that, later blessing his epilepsy for having steered him in this direction. Professor Randolph Schwabe, who interviewed him for the Slade, was, said the ever-self-depreciating Williams, “surprised at my inability and obvious lack of talent but in his kindly way suggested that I should enter for a term to see how things went”. There is a Welsh saying that every Welsh home must have a harp in the corner and a Kyffin on the wall, and at the Albany Gallery in 2004 people queued for three days and nights for one of his previews, eager to buy particular art.
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Irish Art
Snippets of interest to lovers of Art. News about Irish Artists or otherwise. The odd rant...
Sunday
Welsh Art Loss
SIR KYFFIN WILLIAMS was a portraitist, a painter of North Welsh landscapes and seascapes, and an amused chronicler of his own and other people’s foibles. Rain-lashed, green-grey landscapes, stormy, slate-grey seascapes and weather-beaten, pink-grey farmers are the recurring themes of Williams’s art, sketched and, in many cases, painted outdoors in his beloved North Wales. There was never anything precious about Williams’s attitude to his art. One of his trademarks was that he would knead and model his oil paints with a palette knife, regardless of whether or not this was fashionable with the art establishment (and it was not). A doctor proposed that he take up art, and Williams did just that, later blessing his epilepsy for having steered him in this direction. Professor Randolph Schwabe, who interviewed him for the Slade, was, said the ever-self-depreciating Williams, “surprised at my inability and obvious lack of talent but in his kindly way suggested that I should enter for a term to see how things went”. There is a Welsh saying that every Welsh home must have a harp in the corner and a Kyffin on the wall, and at the Albany Gallery in 2004 people queued for three days and nights for one of his previews, eager to buy particular art.
For the full story - click the title
Irish Art
