Tal y bont reservoir, oil on canvas, 24’’ x 20’’
Gyln Collwn October, oil on canvas, 24’’ x 20’’
Allotment snow, oil on wood, 18’’ x 14’’
Veronica Gibson
Veronica Gibson is a landscape painter, who has lived and worked in Wales since 1983. In the nineties, she was strongly influenced by the striking contrasts of the landscape surrounding her home village, Bedlinog, which is perched on one of the steepest hillsides in Mid Glamorgan, and approached over bleak moorland hillsides. It is a place where wild Welsh ponies graze against the backdrop of winding-gear from abandoned mines. Lower down the valley sides are covered by the last broad leafed woodland in this part of Wales. Veronica was inspired by the visual tension between nature and human activity, evident in the juxtaposition of gentle verdant woods and rich coloured rock and soil gouged and exposed by industrial activity.
Veronica's subsequent move to Brecon inspired her to find an equivalent to the post-industrial landscape she left behind, which perhaps a little surprisingly she found in the aesthetics and human endeavor of the allotment she rented. Veronica also travels to other parts of the world, a recent trip to Pakistan with the Swansea Print Workshop provided inspiration for some of the paintings currently exhibited at Galanthus.
Veronica trained at Hertfordshire College of Art before going onto Canterbury College of Art, where she studied under the Scots painter, Thomas Watt, and 'the exquisite colour and magical sense of light renowned in his work, can be seen in her paintings.' In his review 'A Lyrical Painter in the Valleys' 1997, Robert MacDonald describes Veronica's painting style thus, 'Veronica's flickering dancing brushstroke responds to nature's vitality and also to the vitality of the human presence, seeking out patterns of movement and the abstract harmonies which are the essential structures underpinning all painting.'
Veronica has previously exhibited her paintings at galleries and venues including the West Wales Arts Centre and Oriel Pen y fan, Brecon. Her work is held in public and private collections including the Contemporary Art Society of Wales.
Veronica Gibson, 2007