Gwilym Prichard and Claudia Williams

Two distinguished artists who are benefiting from the renewed interest in Welsh post-war figurative painting are Gwilym Prichard and Claudia Williams. They married in 1955 and for many years they painted in Wales.

They moved away in 1985 and finally settled in Brittany. While in France, their work received much acclaim but they continued to exhibit in Wales. In 1995 they were each awarded a silver medal by the Academy of Arts, Science, Letters, Paris. They have recently returned to live and paint in Pembrokeshire but may keep their studio in France.

The forthcoming exhibition features Gwilym Prichard's recent landscape paintings of Wales. Prichard studied at Bangor and Birmingham College of Art. His style is personal, romantic rather than analytical. He is concerned in the feeling of paint and the structure of painting. This is reflected in his preferred use of the palette knife rather than the brush in his oil painting. He is an established landscape painter both in his native Wales and in France and his work may be found in numerous public and private collections.

Claudia Williams' work is less well represented in this exhibition, as she has a highly praised retrospective exhibition of her work at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth running until the end of September 2000. Williams studied at Chelsea College of Art, 1950 - 1953, where she was taught life drawing by sculptor Bernard Meadows, a pupil of Henry Moore.

Her abiding interest in her painting has been the family and many celebrate woman and motherhood. She has exhibited widely and received a number of important portrait commissions and awards.