Pete Jones at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw: - A commentary on 6 paintings by Gavin Keeney

Northwest Wales has what I can only call a somatic effect on my body and mind. It has partly to do with my repeated visits since 2013, but it also has something to do with a mythic dimension in “time-space” that defies categorization. This was confirmed when I visited an exhibition at Plas Glyn-y-Weddw in Llanbedrog on October 29. The exhibition, featuring paintings by five artists, was billed as “A joint exhibition of landscape and figurative art inspired by Welsh poets, industrial and cultural heritage.” Yet, the part that drew my immediate attention was the work of Pete Jones, assembled under the title “Tu Hwnt i’r Mynyddoedd / Beyond the Mountains.” And, amidst several dozen paintings by Jones (forty-one to be precise), the part within the part that truly drew my attention was a “set” of six paintings of dark and sombre, luminous landscapes featuring “Sea + Sky.” The larger corpus of works was spread across three galleries, whereas this set of six paintings shared the wall of one gallery as if they were inseparable. All of the other works on view by Jones departed from the six luminous, nearly monochromatic works that focused on something in the landscape of Northwest Wales that spoke to that somatic effect “being in Northwest Wales” had on my body and mind.

The six paintings (all oil on canvas) were: Soul of the Sea (122x91cm); Under the Mountain Lake (61x51cm); Soul of the Mountain (122x91cm); “Bird on the Winter Sea” (61x51cm); Carnedd (61x51cm); and Y swnt (67x54cm). The press release (flyer) for “Tu Hwnt i’r Mynyddoedd / Beyond the Mountains” included a sequence of provocative statements regarding influences intended to set the work in that mythic reserve I suspected being responsible for my somatic reaction to Northwest Wales. Also playing in the main two galleries was what could only be called “ambient music,” composed by Jones. It, too, was entitled “Tu Hwnt i’r Mynyddoedd” (2024). Low enough in volume to be unobtrusive, it nonetheless added to the spell cast by that set of six paintings.

After several trips around the three galleries, to process what was on display, and following stepping outside to smoke once or twice, while gazing across rooftops toward Llanbedrog beach, Cardigan Bay, and the Irish Sea, I then sat “watching” the set of six paintings, the somber and luminous set, expecting them to start moving – the waves to roll, the skies to part, to reveal their secrets. They shared not only somber luminosity but also a depth. The depths extended in some “into the sea” and in others “into the sky” … In some “into both” (sea + sky). In others, “Sea + Sky” were one thing – a totality – horizon present or horizon absent. In the set of six, landscape itself (mountains, shoreline, lake, sea, sky, sun/moon, treeline) receded as luminous horizon or luminous clouds leapt forth. In one of the set of six (Soul of the Mountain), at “stage left” (top left corner), a moon or sun rose/set/fell, appearing to draw with it a torrent of atmospheric chaos (clouds, mist, winged hallucinatory serpents or …). It all “fell” (was falling) into place/not-place, earth and sky “One” ancient urn of infernal and celestial fires

One outtake so to speak from the set of six was an exceptionally intense and smallish canvas entitled “Blood and the Wild Sky” (oil on canvas, 76x50cm). It was in reference to a passage in “Welsh Landscape,” a poem by R.S. Thomas. The passage referenced was:

“To live in Wales is to be conscious, At dusk of the spilled blood,That went into the making of the wild sky …”

The “bloody canvas” (image of turbulent sea/sky, distant/setting sun/moon in a patch of golden-yellow amidst blood-red sea/sky) overflowed the canvas, spilling on to the white wooden frame, with a few bloody fingerprints for good measure. (It would have been additionally provocative if Jones had left some bloody fingerprints on the gallery wall, the artwork then truly entering into dialogue with the room …) Traces of human figures behind the sea/skyscape were barely discernible or “not there” at all – hallucinations inferred or hallucinations incurred. Jones somehow managed to tap into that “somatic” effect (affective and/or mythic reserve) of the Welsh landscape I felt upon arrival, upon all arrivals in Northwest Wales since my first arrival in 2013; an affective register in landscape that spoke to me of various things, but foremost of “Sea + Sky” as selfsame register, at some level, of “Fate + Grace.”

Gavin Keeney is a New York based author, editor and critic. He is also Director of "Edition One", a literary agency for artists and scholars. This piece is from his "Substack" page published 30/10/24.