After training as an illustrator at Brighton College of Art, I moved to Pembrokeshire in 1968. Since then I have worked as a painter, illustrator, teacher and writer. My recent paintings are influenced by the landscape of France as well as that of Pembrokeshire, although most of my work is not, now, topographical. Rather, it has settled in a precarious hinterland between representation and abstraction, where information gained from years of drawing from nature has synthesized with the imagination. Nevertheless, my work in the studio is always reinforced by drawing from life; for only when I come to draw do I see that what I thought I saw is even more exciting and miraculous than it was at first glance.

My early work has been affected over the years both by an interest in the relationship between the different arts, and more recently by an injury which temporarily forced me to paint with the left hand, a practice I now continue. Painting with the left hand (and so, we are told, with the right side of the brain) has enabled me to work more freely from memory and imagination.
My painting often begins with making (seemingly) random marks, or starting again on top of a discarded image, some of which may be retained as a kind of palimpsest. The subject may develop sooner or later as the work itself evolves, when the music of shape and colour take on the appearance of something I once saw or experienced, perhaps forgotten until that moment. I work on it until it feels right, responding to the initial marks in a kind of conversation with the image. I usually try to ‘fend off’ the moment at which an abstract arrangement begins to refer to something tangible.

The paintings which remain on the edge of abstraction allow viewers their own interpretation. But even those which become more representational, as the composer Erika Fox has said, “might as well not be representational at all. They are dreams, images from another dimension, depicting another place.”
My influences have been the early 20th century European painters such as Klee and Kandinsky and the British school, including Palmer, Hitchens, the St Ives painters and the Scottish colourists. My interest in the relationships between the different arts has developed over the years, and in 2001 I completed a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Wales, Lampeter.

My work can usually be seen at the Studio, Bryn Morris, a converted 18th century cow byre next to the house. The conversion of this old building has retained many of the original features, so keeping its warm and peaceful atmosphere. Here there are prints of original pictures and cards, as well as work in progress. Studio paintings are of all sizes, and range in price from £200 to £1800. Visitors are welcome at any time, but please telephone before calling.

I exhibit regularly throughout Wales – please phone or email for details of forthcoming exhibitions. My work can usually be seen at:
www.thehayloftgallery.co.uk & Art Matters, Tenby.
Recent solo shows include Queen's Hall Narbeth and Washington Gallery, Penarth.
My work is in the collections of the Contemporary Arts Society for Wales, The National Library of Wales & the University Of Wales, Lampeter.

Elizabeth Haines, Bryn Morris, Rhosfach, Clunderwen.

www.elizabethhaines.co.uk

FOUR COWS IN A LANDSCAPE

COVE

BRIGHT DWELLINGS 1

BRIGHT DWELLINGS 2

Colourful and assured – a celebration in paint
Anne Price-Owen
Food for the soul
Lindsay Reebeck
Almost mythological…evocative of other worlds
Anne-Marie Mietkowski
Like fragments of the past reworked
Maura Hazelden