The horse, the robin and the laced leaves

A3 Limited edition signed giclée print, edition of 20. Unframed.

This print is taken from a watercolour, gouache, and pen and ink work. 

When we went to Laugharne when I was young, a robin had somehow got in through a hole in Dylan Thomas’s shed. Everything was so perfectly static and preserved, coat hanging on the back of the chair, documents half-finished and abandoned on the desk. But the robin was living movement in the stillness.

By that point, I had listened to Under Milk Wood on repeat. Each bedtime I was carried down to the ‘sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea’.

As we looked down to the marshy bay, there on the silty mud lay a white horse, not moving, eyes closed. My sister, my parents – they all claim not to remember. But I recall gazing down at flank and mane for a long time; not struck by sadness, but struck by strangeness. The occurrence linked with the robin, so it made sense in the dreamy tilt of what I thought was the town’s character, full of the voices of the play and the rolling motifs.

There are shells in this painting, the edge of lace, characters from Under Milk Wood, fox, gull, a Welsh jug, pine and misty woods, among other parts that are all significant to the narrative, both the play’s and mine.

This painting took a long time. I’ve written alongside it, read a lot, sketched the compositions of other artists that I find interesting, particularly neo-romantic structures. I’ve barely touched the surface, but here she is. Part of something bigger, work in progress  

Note that a percentage of all my profits goes to charity and towards funding other artists. For this print, these will go to Save the Children Wales.