DENBIGH based landscape artist Sarah Carvell is exhibiting her first solo show ‘A Year of Painting’ at Ffin y Parc Gallery this February.

Born in Leicestershire in 1964, Sarah grew up in the Vale of Clwyd in Llannefydd and is a fluent Welsh speaker. She studied art in Wrexham and at Loughborough College of Art, before returning to North Wales to teach Art and Design at secondary and further education levels.

Sarah works from her studio in Denbigh, where the main focus of her work is oil painting, working from sketches drawn on location in the Welsh landscape. She said she is inspired by Nicolas De Stael and David Bomberg and Welsh artists Peter Prendergast and Sir Kyffin Williams.

Sarah, one of only a few female landscape painters in Wales, said her work shows there’s more to Welsh landscapes than grey and green: “The exhibition is work selected from a year of painting and it has examples of all my favourite haunts, from the hills and coasts of North Wales, to St Ives in Cornwall.”

She explained: “2014 turned out to be the first year in a decade when I didn’t paint at all. In retrospect, it wasn’t a conscious decision: it just worked out that way. This Year of Painting is the out-pouring after my year of no painting, like a big catch-up with an old friend after not speaking for a while!”

She added: “This collection of paintings demonstrates the tremendous variety of the Welsh landscape- from the stillness of calm water in Moelfre on Anglesey to a depiction of the more riotous and energetic landscapes between Llannefydd and Betws Yn Rhos.

“This exhibition is an opportunity for visitors to shake off the winter blues and escape for a while into a painted diary of seasons past and present with an optimistic reminder of what is to come.” Gallery owner Ralph Sanders said within Sarah’s paintings the glow and radiance of communication shines through. He added: “Sarah really knows how the paint works, how to catch the light now, the cloud-shadows moving in the distance and even the silence, with grace and economy; and paint responds- grateful and joyful, eager and eloquent.”

Sarah’s solo show runs from Sunday, February 7 until Wednesday, March 2, at Ffin y Parc Art Gallery Betws y Coed.