We're pleased to announce the shortlisted artists for the award this year...
Lisa Carter Grist
Lisa Carter Grist, born Cardiff, 1972 is an artist living and working in North Wales. She makes abstract and expressionistic works that reveal worlds that arise from experimentation and the emotional journey involved in making, destroying and reviving work. Using landscape, interiors and the body to think through her work in the studio, she also draws on influences, personal, literary and visual fragments that she collects and arranges on the studio table. These she intuitively and emotionally edits to find connections forming pretexts which are destined to be transformed by impulsive decision making and the influence of the materials and her mood.
Working as an uncertain observer or a collaborator rather than a director, a role that she believes is influenced by her experience of theatre design, she is drawn into the emotional and imaginative spaces that are generated by mark making and the re-shaping of forms. Her works seem idiosyncratic but many link together through the interconnectivity of their sources, and the process of their making which often involves the transferral by print from one surface to another.
Elin Crowley
"I am a freelance artist specialising in printmaking, and have just completed an MA in Fine Art at Aberystwyth University, specialising in printmaking, focusing on copper, aluminium and collagraph etching. My work is based on the landscape around us in Bro Ddyfi. The work stems from an appreciation of the way of life in the countryside; the traditions, language, Welsh culture and the beauty of the landscape which are an integral part of my life.
I applied for the Eirian Llwyd memorial award at a turning point in my career. I have just completed an MA course and have spent 2 intensive years focusing on improving my printing craft and considering my concepts in depth. I am very keen to continue developing my work and push the boundaries so that my images are original and my curiosity about creating continues. Making a living from printing is a dream of mine, and although I get great pleasure from creating, and am in a fortunate position to be a freelancer, achieving everything I would like with 3 children and living in a rural area in Wales can feel difficult due to the limitations of networking, which is important in the art world.”
Zoe Lewthwaite
"My artistic practice has been shaped by my transition from the fast-paced lifestyle of working and living in London to moving back home to the tranquil rurality of Pen Llŷn. Since 2021, I have been developing my practice as a textile printmaker within my studio in Aberuchaf Craft Centre, Abersoch.
Having my own creative space provides me with the time and focus to develop my specialism in printmaking and host workshops to promote the joy and importance of handmade craft. I also utilise the space to showcase my work and offer visitors passing by a glimpse into my creative process in a hands-on and interactive setting.
Moving back to the Llŷn has deepened my appreciation for the local landscape and coastline where I explore the shorelines and terrain, not only as a source of inspiration but also as a rich resource for materials. With sustainability in mind and an awareness of the textile industry's impact on the environment, I am mindful of the materials I use and enjoy experimenting with creating my own natural pigments while primarily working with natural fibres.
My design process often starts by drawing spontaneously with ink and charcoal on large rolls of paper which I find aids my drawing style and forms a natural development in my work. Drawing in a loose and expressive way helps me to alleviate pressure and embrace mistakes along the way;often leading to some of my most cherished pieces of work. In a world that often prioritises perfection, I believe it’s important to celebrate and highlight the value and beauty of the imperfect."
Flora McLachlan
Flora’s imagery springs out of her sense of the mythical and archetypal elements of landscape, as found in the storytelling tradition. She is fascinated by how the residue of our childhood and lifelong reading affects our emotional connection with a landscape. She has been living in Brynberian, West Wales, for eleven years, and her work increasingly meditates upon local myths, real and imagined, as stories of belonging, navigating her way towards a feeling of home, learning a different language.
The motif of the transformative quest informs her work with a sense of travelling outwards into the wild forest, and inwards into the mysteries of the self. She makes drawings of unfamiliar places in Wales, listening to tales, half-heard hinted legends, imagining the local mythology, working in series to build up a rich storied vision. A series of lithographs are based on a stay in Corris in North Wales. She is devoted to innovation within print, experimenting with techniques of painterly etching such as monotype transfer, white ground washes, collagraph transfer, and the sugar lift method used by Picasso, in which he uses his nose-grease to make resist patterns.
“I enjoy working with unexpected traces, observing and responding to them, to dream my images into being. Through the alchemical portals of etching or lithography, I can enter different magical worlds and make my work in those fairytale atmospheres.”
“In etching, the copper plate enters the mordant as into a witch’s cauldron; working like this, you are drawing incantations and casting spells. I enjoy using impermanent and chaotic etching grounds to let chance into my work, which I then scry into with scraper and additional etching to reach the image and evoke my shadowy, dreamlike stories. A suggestion of reaching beyond, or towards the Other, is always present in my work.
I also use simple ritual and divination to provoke unexpected connections. Images from my everyday life and my memory are thus gathered and bound into a tentative and poetic personal mythology that weaves me to the world and to other people.”
Gareth Berwyn
Gareth is a Welsh Printmaker, from Waunfawr, Gwynedd. Welsh is his first language.
Gareth is neurodivergent and comes from a working-class background. These aspects of his cultural identity directly inform both his fine art practice and his social engagement work. Gareth is a founding member of Mutton Fist Press; a disability-led art organisation that offers printmaking facilities, teaching and art career support to the general public, with an ethos of priority towards disabled artists and those from marginalised areas of society. Gareth is also an active member of the co-operative art gallery ‘Five Years’ in Archway, North London, a position that he uses to showcase artists from north Wales within the capital.
Gareth began working closely with Master printmaker Frank Connelly in the early 2000s. Working across a myriad of print disciplines, with particular focus on the editioning of intaglio prints, especially complex photo-etchings. Over the past 20+ years Gareth has worked as a technician and tutor in several prestigious London institutions, including Blackheath Conservatoire, The City Literary Institute, and The Royal Drawing School. Gareth often devises and teaches his own expert level short courses at these colleges, in order to share his ingenious and idiosyncratic print processes alongside more traditional methods.
Eleanor Whiteman
“My background in geology and photography has deepened my relationship with the landscape, from bitterly cold days mapping the rocks as a student, to hours spent walking the cliff path with my camera. Walking and connecting with the landscape is an important part of my process as this allows a discourse to develop with a place that is always evolving and never static. I live and work in Caerphilly so have easy access to the coast, and its unique Geology is a constant source of inspiration. I’m interested in thinking about time in terms of layers, both in a literal and conceptual sense and these themes of land and deep time are recurrent throughout my practice. I have used many different processes in an attempt to express visually the concepts of time and landscape including lino and woodcut, etching, mono print, painting and photography.
A recent residency with Cardiff M.A.D.E provided a space to explore new ways of working with print. Discovering new possibilities whilst testing the parameters of different materials in order to move away from the literal and allowing the ‘mark’ to be the narrative. The resulting images became more about formal relationship, pattern, form and colour; observed and remembered. This was an exciting development within my practice and I feel that it has paved the way for further experimentation and is just the beginning of a new dialogue. “
Jonah Evans
"I have exhibited single prints in many exhibitions but now feel it is time to build a series of related print works on a single theme for a solo show.”
Now back in Wales Jonah enjoys walking in the mountains and exploring the uplands of the Welsh landscape. He draws and photographs his journeys and uses these ‘en plein air’ works to produce prints back in the studio. One of the continuing threads in his work has been the exploration of the area near to his home in mid Wales and finding various ways of producing images that capture his excitement for those visits.
He is inspired by the classic Japanese prints of Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), particularly the 36 views of Mount Fuji. “I would like to marry my love of mountain walking in Wales with my love of printmaking. Living in mid Wales and in close proximity to some incredible mountains I would like to produce 36 views of Cader Idris (a mountain I am familiar with and have climbed many times from all sides).”
Nature and landscape are a constant inspiration. Print-making is both challenging and fascinating and I wish to expand my practice of lino printing by delving into several differing techniques, including etching, drypoint and lithography.
Copies of a recent print The Transformation of Taliesin has been exhibited widely and sold well. As a result of this he has been commissioned to create a series of twelve images to accompany a mythical story book by the published author Joe Treasure.