Kyffin, the storyteller, has been on my mind over the New Year. On the few occasions that I heard him speak in person, it was always amusing (sometimes downright comic), engaging and heart-warming. His stories were about people, their histories, and unusual ways of interacting.
His gift as a master storyteller was best expressed in his art. In the solitude of his little studio, the calm of the mountains or the psychological rigour of his portrait sittings he found concrete, plastic evidence of his ability to explain a life story, or a drama with just the painter’s tools.
The Royal Academy’s new exhibition on Van Gogh, which shows his drawings and paintings alongside his letters is another example of an artist who used every medium available to himself to celebrate what he saw. In fact, his perceptions of the ordinary, even today bite deep into our feelings about the nature of everyday life.
We know Kyffin was an admirer of Van Gogh. Kyffin shared with him a considerable facility with words and the passion to explain in paint how he felt about the world around him.
Kyffin imbibed the best of European art, applied it to his cynefin, and in so doing introduced for us a new way of seeing our own places and ourselves.
I think that storytelling was a way of life for Kyffin, a form of involvement with people; he loved an audience and responded to their delight. His Bequest to Wales tells his story to us: that truth is stranger than fiction.
Paul Joyner