Caeau Elenydd / Elenydd Fields

Location

Country: UK
City: Wales
Place: Cardiff, Cardiff Hub

Irregular shapes of colour. A brightness, yellow, in the centre. Brooding greys and blues tempered with shades of purple suggest a sky. This might be what we first take in when looking at Mary Lloyd Jones’ expressionist painting of Elenydd Fields. Our eye is also drawn to the series of stark black lines in the foreground, in a grid-like configuration that seems to hold some hidden meaning. There are other lines and marks in the work, all simply drawn, but in a deliberate way that conveys something we cannot quite grasp. 

The artist, Mary Lloyd Jones has been painting the landscape of Wales, to which she feels a strong personal connection, for many years. She is interested in the literary and oral traditions of Wales, particularly the Ogham alphabet, used by the ancient Celts to write the earliest forms of Gaelic and the Bardic alphabet, invented by a Welsh poet in the 18th century. Her interest in the landscape that surrounds her extends also to the marks made on it by humans – both the type that have been etched out on the land over years, or those more recently inflicted on the land, as for example the geometric marks left behind by army firing drills, that have been retrieved with drone imagery. The Elenydd Fields that Jones paints in this landscape is a large and once remote upland in the Cambrian Mountains, which lies on the border of England and Wales. She has says about her practice that ‘my work should reflect my identity, my relationship with the land, an awareness of history, and the treasure of our literary and oral traditions’.

Mary Lloyd Jones was born in Ceredigion in Wales and trained at the Cardiff College of Art. Most recently her work was included in a solo exhibition at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre (2023). She has exhibited widely in Wales, elsewhere in the UK, and overseas, including a touring exhibition in China and the Wales' Smithsonian Festival in Washington DC, US (both 2009). Jones is an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, Carmarthen and University of Aberystwyth, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Wales, Cardiff. She is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. As an Artist-in-Residence she has worked in Scotland, Ireland, United States, India, Italy, Spain and France.

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

canvas, oil paint

Artist

Mary Lloyd Jones (1934 - )

Title

Caeau Elenydd / Elenydd Fields

Date

2021

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

height: 46.0 cm; width: 51.0 cm; depth: 2.5 cm

Acquisition

Martin Tinney Gallery, March 2022

Provenance

Martin Tinney Gallery, Cardiff Wales UK; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 31 March 2022

GAC number

19069