'Retrospective exhibition' - 24/3/24 - 7/7/24
With great sadness, we inform you that Berwyn Jones suddenly passed away during this exhibition.
It is a great comfort to us that Berwyn got to see the exhibition in place and experience the admiration that so many people expressed to him during the opening on the 24th of March.
This exhibition celebrates the career of Berwyn Jones and includes a range of works produced during a period of nearly 40 years through many mediums.
Born in Llanbedrog in 1942, Berwyn's artistic talent was nurtured under the influential teacher Elis Gwyn Jones at Pwllheli Grammar School during the 1950s. He attended Leicester College of Art between 1960 and 1964 and completed a foundation course course there before going on to study drawing and painting.
He spent a year at Brighton Art College in 1964-65 studying engraving, lithography and relief printing. During this period he created oil paintings on canvas such as 'Bargodion Gwlith' and was part of the 'Cwlwm' exhibition at ‘Y Gegin’, Cricieth with other former pupils of Elis Gwyn.
He taught art at secondary schools for a period and established himself as a self-employed artist in the late 1960s and early 1970s, making a series of small woodcuts mainly of Llŷn landscapes.
In the 1970s he turned his hand to pottery and built an oil-fired kiln. Janet, his future wife, joined him as an Apprentice in 1974 and this began a productive period of creating pottery and examples of the pottery are part of the exhibition.
In 1984 he bought an engraving press which led to the creation of a series of engravings, mainly of local landscapes and seascapes. Then, in 1994 he turned his sights once again to painting oil on canvas creating works such as 'Yn y Berllan' and 'Hen Sugn, Hen Dai'.
At the turn of the New Millennium a New challenge came with the opportunity to collaborate with Hugh Jones, a local blacksmith to create a new statue to be placed on Mnydd Tir y Cwmwd. The exhibition includes sketches created while planning the iron statue installed to overlook Llanbedrog beach in 2002.