Celebration of Contemporary Welsh Painting
Video of exhibition on lower floor gallery at Found Gallery, 1 Bulwark, Brecon, LD3 7LB
The Alternative Commute
Maggie James seventeen new paintings at Found Gallery relate to a 3km bike ride, from a house in North East Cardiff to a studio in the South of the city. The route is calm, with an energy and dynamic unlike other ways through the city. Delicate ecosystems thrive along the pathways, creating an almost continuous green trail. Everything is in flux - the light, the wind, the mood of the day, the temperament of the people you pass, the background sounds of the city… and this changes the feeling and mood of the journey. Most days the river is muddy with a sombre green reflection, but this can change to a mirror reflection of animators blue sky.
The paintings have a sequential element with different combinations of vegetation and buildings. They are a mapping of sorts, initially linked to a collaboration with Eu Jin Lim, an architect based in Kuala Lumpur, as part of Open BooksOnline in 2021, when the series took the form of 10 large 1.5metre drawings and a folding book. When this series started main roads were deserted, streets were empty, people kept a huge distance between each other, ghost buses kept running.
Alongside this work, a series of smaller, earlier paintings echo the atmosphere.
View my paintings on show at Found 14 September - 15 October 2022