Cyrils Room in Bryn Myrddin, 2026
Oil and Acrylic on Linen
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This painting begins in that colour not as surface, but as condition. Pink carries the afterimage of my grandmother Letitia’s murals, once breathing landscape onto the walls of Bryn Myrddin, easing outside into inside at a time when industry was tearing open hillsides, bodies, and lives. Here, pink holds memory in suspension, a skin stretched between protection and exposure.
The palette rises like a platform of work. It is not play. It is labour lifted. The chain hanging from the branch is exact. It is the chain that helped Cyril, my great uncle, adjust his body in bed after injury. Like his body, the tree is damaged, broken, altered, yet still growing. It reaches forward through time. Scars do not stop it. They redirect it.The tools of his brothers gather around the image as ceremonial objects, no longer functioning only through use, but standing as witnesses. They remember work, care, endurance. They mark attention.The cut stump beneath the palette holds time in its rings. Extraction and support sit together. Loss and bearing share the same form. This is where body and ground speak to one another through pressure and adaptation.
Behind, the landscape is held briefly in place, revealed like an archive fragment. I am already inside it, moving by feel. On the wall to the left, an image within the image holds the monkey spirit of the family, watching from concealment, ready to intervene if needed.The painting rests in reverie. Nothing resolves. Letitia’s murals, Cyril’s chain, the tools, the landscape, and my own act of painting coexist. Damaged, attentive, still reaching.