John Welson - Thirteen Flowers

Saturday 1st - Sunday 16th June 2013

Weekends only 10am-5pm

John Welson began painting at the age of 12. He received a thorough education in painting, drawing, graphics and ceramics and attended two colleges of art. He has participated in over 200 exhibitions in both private and public galleries around the world since the early 1970's. He is a key figure in the history of post-war British Surrealism having worked with artists such as Conroy Maddox, Paul Hammond and Edouard Jaguer as well as engaging with the International Surrealist movement through collaborative works with artists such as Rik Lina, Gregg Simson and Kathy Fox.  He has been involved in a spectrum of group projects such as participating in Mouvement Phases since the late 1970s and has exhibited alongside artists as diverse as Salvador Dali, Man Ray, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud and Damien Hirst.

From the late 1960's to the early 1990's Welson painted figurative Surrealist paintings, where inanimate objects metamorphose into beasts and human forms. In these earlier paintings, knives, saws, scissors and combs mutate into hands, horses and dissected human forms. These strange, fluid figures occupy naïve, oneiric interiors and landscapes. And, although Welson’s earlier paintings appear to manifest strange nightmare visions, they are not imagined fantasies; they tie the materiality of the world to personal memories, reflections and recollections.

Since the mid 1990's Welson has produced lyrical abstracted paintings inspired by the landscape of his native Wales. The landscape is referred to in earlier works but in these recent works, the whirling figures and fractured objects are buried in the memory of the land. His new works relate more to Max Ernst’s frottage cityscapes than they do to the English landscape tradition. Explorations of specific landscapes are key to the spirit of British surrealism but the surrealist relationship to landscape is not particularly romantic or expressionistic. Surrealism’s response to the pure abstraction of early modernism relies on the historical, psychological and physical aspects of the situations in which it finds itself and this includes explorations of the urban and rural landscape. The situation of surrealism depends on such investigations and, in many ways it is the position of Welson as of the land: a surrealist who is painter, poet and farmer. Welson’s landscape paintings depict the materiality of the landscape through carefully rendered paint that conceals as much as it reveals. Memories inhabit Welson’s landscapes: recollections of the recent and ancient past dissolve into prehistoric, amorphous forms that erupt from the hills of Radnorshire. The Welsonian landscape overflows with memory and physical desire.

The series of works shown here entitled ‘Thirteen Flowers’ demonstrate a further development of Welson’s painting where his lyrical, abstract interpretations of the Welsh landscape have been transposed to the study of still life, specifically the macro landscape of the flower. Where he transforms the rural landscape into organic forms that appear as the transmutation of land into flesh and vegetable eruptions, his flower pictures turn the folds and curves of floral structures into an erotic landscape of flowing paint. Welson’s handling of paint has been honed to an apparently effortless undulating surface yet each work is not only formally powerful but also suggestive of a personal or archetypal myth. As spectators, we inhabit the landscape of Welson’s ‘Thirteen Flowers’ as if an insect exploring the bright folds of a seductive and sensual materiality.

Tair Blodyn ar Ddeg

Dechreuodd John Welson beintio yn 12 oed. Derbyniodd addysg drwyadl mewn peintio, llunio, graffeg a serameg a mynychodd ddau goleg celf. Mae e wedi cymeryd rhan mewn dros 200 o arddangosfeydd mewn galeriau preifat a chyhoeddus o gwmpas y byd ers y 1970au cynnar. Mae yn ffigwr allweddol mewn hanes swrealaeth Prydeinig ol-rhyfel a gweithiodd gydag artistiaid fel Conroy Maddox, Paul Hammond a Edouard Jaguer yn ogystal a’i gysylltiad a’r symudiad Swrealaeth Rhyngwladol drwy gydweithio gydag artistiaid fel Rik Lina, Gregg Simson a Kathy Fox.  Mae e wedi bod yn rhan o sbectrwm o brosiectau grwp er enghraifft cymeryd rhan yn Mouvement Phases ers y 1970au hwyr ac mae wedi arddangos ei waith ochr yn ochr ag artistiaid mor amrywiol a Salvador Dali, Man Ray, René Magritte, Max Ernst, Lucian Freud a Damien Hirst.

O’r 1960au hwyr i’r  1990au cynnar mae Welson wedi paentio ffigurau swrealaidd yn ei baentiadau lle mae gwrthrychau difywyd yn metamorffio i fod yn fwystfilod a ffurffiau dynol.  Yn ei baentiadau cynnar mae cyllyll, llifau, sisyrnau a chribau yn treiglo I fod yn ddwylo, ceffylau a ffurfiau dynol dyranedig. Meddiannai y ffigyrau od, llifol yma dirwedd a mewndir naïf. Er bod gwaith cynnar Welson yn edrych fel petaent yn amlygu eu hun fel delweddau hunllefol rhyfedd, nid ydynt yn ffantasiau dychmygol; meant yn clymu materolaeth y byd i atgofion personol, adlewyrchiadau ac atgofion. 

Ers canol y 1990au mae Welson wedi creu paentiadau haniaethol telynegol sydd wedi eu hysbrydoli gan dirwedd ei gynhenid sef Cymru. Cafodd y tirwedd ei gyfeirio ato yn ei waith diweddar, mae’r ffigyrau troelledig a gwrthrychau toriedig wedi eu claddu mewn atgof o’r tir. 

Mae ei waith newydd yn perthyn yn agosach i ffrotais dinesig Max Ernst nag ydynt i draddodiad tirwedd Seisnig. Archwiliadau o dirwedd penodol yw ysbryd allweddol swrealaeth Prydeinig ond nid yw’r berthynas a’r dirwedd yn rhamantus na mynegiadol mewn gwirionedd. Mae ymateb swrealaeth i’r purdeb abstract o fodernaeth cynnar yn dibynnu ar agwedd hanesyddol, seicolegol a chorfforol y sefyllfeydd lle mae’n darganfod ei hun gan cynnwys archwiliadau o’r tirwedd trefol a gwledig.

Dibynnau sefyllfa swrealaeth ar ymchwiliadau tebyg ac mewn nifer ffordd mae’n dangos sefyllfa Welson ar y tir: swrrealydd sydd yn beintiwr, bardd a ffermwr. Darluniau paentiadau tirwedd Welson materolaeth y tirwedd drwy baent sydd wedi ei ddatgan yn ofalus ac sydd yn cuddio cymaint ag y mae yn arddangos. Mae atgofion yn byw yn Nhirweddau Welson: atgofion o’r gorffennol diweddar a’r gorffennol hynafol yn toddi i greu ffurfiau cyn hanesiol, amorffaidd sydd yn echdorri o fynyddoedd Sir Radnor.  Gorlifai tirwedd Welsonaidd gydag atgofion a chwant corfforol.

Mae’r gwaith a ddangosir yma a enwir ‘Tair Blodyn ar Ddeg’ yn arddangos datblygiad pellach yng ngwaith peintio Welson lle mae ei waith yn ddetholiad telynegol, haniaethol o’r tirwedd Cymreig sydd wedi ei drawsosod i’r astudiaeth o fywyd llonydd yn benodol tirwedd macro’r blodyn.  Lle y mae yn trawsnewid y tirwedd gwledig i fod yn ffurfiau organig sydd yn dangos y trawsnewidiad o dir i gnawd a tharddiad llysiau, troai ei luniau o flodau, y plygiadau a chrymedd strwythur blodau i fod yn dirwedd erotig o baent yn llifo. Mae ymdriniaeth Welson o baent wedi ei hogi i ymdonni arwyneb diymdrech er bod pob darn nid ond yn bwerus ond hefyd yn awgrymog o chwedl personol neu archdeipol.  Fel gwylwyr, rydym yn preswylio tirwedd ‘Tair blodyn ar ddeg’ Welson fel pry yn archwilio’r plygiadau llachar o ddeunydd deniadol a chnawdol.