My work connects the beauty of the natural landscape of Wales with the lived human experience of being Welsh. As a former farmer, and one descended from a line of Welsh farmers as far back as I can trace, I feel viscerally connected to our land. Whether it is this familial relationship or a synaesthetic tendency, I ‘feel’ colour, form and atmosphere in a landscape. Like my mentor and friend, the late Meg Stevens RCA, I cherish the wonder in the inconspicuous - the sinuous sweep of grasses in the wind, the enigmatic shadows of winter light on melting snow. Working predominantly in oil paints, I not only seek to capture the essence of the physical - the geographical and textural landscapes of Wales - but to also invite the viewer to explore the emotional aspects of our nation that lie within and alongside its rugged beauty, such as the historical, cultural and socio-political contexts. I am particularly drawn to the losses of Wales - and the Welsh response to them: our lost cultural heritage; our fight for the survival of the language; the stolen landscapes; the exploitation of our land, resources and people. I am fascinated by how our response to these losses encourages us - or taunts us - to define ourselves not by what we are, but by what we are not. I believe our landscape sings of these losses and when I paint them, I hear that song. It is my job as an artist to enable the viewer to form their own personal yet equally profound connection - not only to the landscape itself, but to the experiences of that landscape too. I paint with words too; through my arts-based research I have found that using poetry alongside a painting elicits a deeper, multi-sensory response in the viewer - a relationship that ensures that the sum becomes greater than the parts. It captures attention, evokes emotion and completes the storytelling. Being a self-taught artist means that my technique is my own, my approach based purely on instinct, intuition and experience. So, whilst I am not constrained by the constructs of formal art teaching on a technical level, I have however, benefited from the deep exploration of the narrative beneath my work gained through undertaking a Masters Degree much later in my artistic career.