Denys Short: Square Routes

1 March - 4 June 2010

Denys Short was born in Devon in 1927 and studied at Goldsmiths College in London where he met his wife, textile artist Eirian from Fishguard. In 1985 they moved permanently from London to Dinas Cross.

Over the years he has exhibited in many mixed and solo exhibitions at venues such as the Royal Academy and the Serpentine Gallery. For many years he worked on paintings of the coal valleys of South Wales. He won the gold medal for fine art in the 1958 Eisteddfod, and in 2005 was eventually received into the Gorsedd of Bards as ‘Denys o’r Dinas’.

He is best known for his 3-dimensional environmental work, and in 1986, he received Arts Council funding to create a sculpture park by his home in Dinas Cross. He has also worked on commissions for the Woodland Trust, Cardiff Bay Development, Ebbw Vale Garden Festival and Tregwynt Mill.

He last exhibited at the National Library in 1997, a retrospective exhibition of paintings and drawings of the coal valleys, from the 1950s to the 1970s.

This exhibition is predominantly of paintings created over the last 2 ½ years since the artist returned to paint. The influence of the repetitive patterns and strong geometric shapes found in Welsh and American quilts are evident in Denys’ paintings and 3-dimensional structures.

In August of 2009 he was invited to exhibit this new work at the Festival of Quilts at the NEC in Birmingham.

'I have loved quilts since I took the photographs for my wife's books on quilting in the 70s and get enormous satisfaction looking at them. In 2008, tiring of the problems inherent in making and transporting sculpture, I decided after decades, to go back to painting.

I wanted to see if I could do something in paint that was in essence quilt-like. The idea was not completely new as I made a coal miners 'quilt' picture “Swan Song”, in the 70s when I was painting the S-Wales valleys. In sculpture I had been working with combinations of squares and other simple building blocks, growing complicated forms. Moving back into paint has allowed me to look at the variations that come with changes in size, colour and spacing on flat surfaces.'

Events
Gallery Talk
Thursday 20 May 2010 13:15
Free admission

Links
Photographs from the official opening can be seen on the Library's Facebook page.