Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A painter known for evocative landscapes and portraits of Wales, using thick oils and strong contrasts of light and dark.
On the island
Eight records
Nocturne No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 9, No. 2
Well, I love Chopin. I love the Northern composers, I suppose, but partly because they are more neurotic. Rachmaninoff, Chopin, those sharp staccato notes, they stimulate me.
When I was at school in Shrewsbury, we ran a mission in the back streets of Liverpool, and I went there once, and on the Sunday morning we all went to Liverpool Cathedral and we sat in this magnificent sort of transept, and I remember this tremendous echoing sound.
Now I love male voice choirs. I suppose all Welsh people do. And singing is very much part of it.
Jesu, Joy of Man's DesiringFavourite
And she played Jesus Joy of Man Desiring. And I've never forgotten that. It really sank in. I was a piece of emotional jelly bought with Margareta Tripp and Mara Hess.
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43
Howard Shelley concentrated on Rachmaninoff, and I've always loved Rachmaninoff. I always think of Tintoretto when I hear Rachmaninoff.
His recent work has moved me very much. It's tremendously sonorous and it carries you on, moving sort of t it's very much the same, but that is uh to its benefit.
A man I love who's is singing is Bryn Tervell. Because Bryn Tervell, his father's a sheep farmer. And uh I admire Byn Tervell immensely because he's never lost uh the idea of being the son of a sheep farmer there.
With all these wonderful records, I think I must have something which would really make me happy if I was on a desert island. Something not terribly deep, but some something which should make me dance or jump or something.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Has that love of painting, or the love of what you paint, been enough to sustain you all these years?
It has. I haven't ever tried to be famous or anything like that because um that's rather stupid… I've just l I love the landscape where I live, and my ancestors have lived there from time immemorial, so it was natural for me just to paint the landscape and the people.
Presenter asks
3:01What do you mean [by saying some of your paintings are neurotic]?
Well, it's all tied up with the nerves. I love the more neurotic painters. I love Gerrico, Tintoretto, and people like that. And well, in all romantic art, there is an underlying violence, a sort of dark clouds, blue-black skies, flashes of lightning.
Presenter asks
3:32Is it that sort of Welsh Celtic melancholy?
Well, I think perhaps we do tend to be melancholic in Wales, whether it's a natural thing or is it the landscape or what? I don't know. But uh I am a melancholic, I suppose. I come of a line of melancholics on my mother's side.
The keepsakes
The book
Émile Zola
There was one book which made an immense impression on me, and that was Germinal by Emile Zola. It sort of tied up with all the horrors of the mining areas in Northern France. It tied up with Van Gogh and the Borinage, and it's a very, very long book, too, so I could read bits of it.
The luxury
A painting of a girl's head by Michael Schwerz
Well, I would deprive the nation the world of it, and I couldn't do that. So I think possibly what I would like is a painting by a relatively unknown artist, a man called Michael Schwerz, a 17th-century contemporary of Vermeer. And this is a little painting, a head of a girl. It's in Leicester City Art Gallery. But it's quite a small painting, and I don't think the world would worry all that much if they were deprived of this beautiful little painting.
Presenter asks
6:58Is that what it is? Is it [epilepsy] a kind of strength of feeling that has to be channelled into creativity?
Yes, I have a feeling there is that. It's um there's two types of painters really. There's the the Van Gogh type who did have the grain of sand in their oyster and it irritated them and they had to paint.
Presenter asks
13:55Can I suggest that the landscape offered you not just food for the soul, but also perhaps it was a bit of an escape, because you were rather unloved at home, too, weren't you?
Oh no, I was lovely at home. But uh not uh very emotionally, but I was looked after brilliantly.
Presenter asks
23:30What convinced you you could finally leave and make it on your own without the income from teaching?
Oh, I wasn't convinced at all. But luckily I launched myself as a painter onto the world when Wales was changing. The sons of miners, ministers, they couldn't have bought pictures themselves… But because of better education in Wales, their children went to the universities and they became schoolmasters, architects, engineers. And suddenly a whole new market opened and I tapped that market.
“I do love the strong contrasts of dark and light. It stimulates me, as maybe a cigarette or a glass of whisky does to other people.”
“I used to go and sit on a hill in front of the house with my small dog when we were shooting rabbits, and I used to look at one of the most wonderful views in Wales… It was just wonderful, but I didn't say, My God, that's wonderful. You don't do that sort of thing. It's sort of seeped in.”
“And so much of what is called art now is just not art. I mean it's like calling sheep goats. They're probably not goats, but they're called goats. And what we get now is a totally loveless art. We get something which might be clever. Somebody's never thought of it before. I mean this is so stupid. Trying to be original is such a silly thing because art it will be original if it comes from somebody who is basically in touch with the world around them and feels enough.”
“I do paint a lot of bad pictures. Every time I moved when I was in London or somewhere else, I used to just burn about a hundred paintings and about five hundred drawings or something, because lots lot of massive rubbish. What I do now is I get a Stanley knife and go around cutting great holes in paintings and throwing the holes away.”