In Oriel Lliw, a gallery on the top floor of Pontardawe Arts Centre, you'll find this acrylic painting by my sister Elaine.
It's entitled 'The Great Game' and depicts a cosmos with clown-like character at its centre. I love its swirl of colours and the title certainly suggests to me her past interest in Eastern religions, as she was once a devotee of the Divine Light Mission and its very dubious leader.
She lives not far from the Arts Centre in a Care Home.
Sadly, she can't live independently , as it would be too much of a risk.
Nowadays, she speaks very little about that Guru and the meditation which once ruled her life.
Her painting and classical cds are her two interests, though her physical deterioration means that painting is increasingly difficult.
Mentally, she is generally very sharp and her memory varies between excellent and non-existent.
Not since she had a painting exhibited at the Dylan Thomas Theatre based on one of his poems has she been exhibited anywhere and her joy at being alongside many fine artists was wonderful to hear (membership of Arts in the Tawe Valley making this possible).
When my brother and I ( she would insist on the correct grammar!) visited her recently , we took her to view the items placed in storage when she had to leave her Swansea council flat.
She was delighted to open up such a treasure trove from her past, which consisted almost entirely of paintings.
It was such a revelation and from so long ago, that she insisted occasionally they weren't by her ; though the telling initials in the corner told otherwise.
She kept a portrait she'd done of our maternal gran whom she called 'Nan-nan' on the back of the canvas, recalling that was the way 'Nanny' signed letters to her.
When she was a baby our Nanny had virtually brought her up ; my mother rejecting her for fear of contracting the mastitis she had suffered with my brother.
My sister always claimed she was called 'Nanny' just because she filled that crucial role in our upbringing, but notably for her, the only girl.
She also kept another very moving study of bodies superimposed on a landscape, a tribute to a mother and her child who suffered from Muscular Dystrophy. The flowing hills reminded me of the Cambridgeshire chalklands of our youth.
She went to a psychiatric hospital there when she returned from a serious brain injury while in Israel ; my brother, not my parents, travelling out there in that direst of emergencies when she could've died from a fractured skull.
She was knocked back to a second childhood, had to relearn everything. She was burdened by memory loss and epilepsy which prevented her from working.
Now, she likes doing portraits of staff and visitors though I prefer her other ones, like the intriguing one of her refusing to throw the ashes of our mother and stepfather from the stone jetty at Tanybwlch, near Penparcau ( where we grew up).
Her dark-cloaked figure seems to mutate into a monolith.
In Penparcau I clearly recall my brother's model aeroplanes, skilfully fashioned out of the lightest materials, balsa wood and tissue paper, but have few recollections of her.
I believe she must've avoided our house even more than I did : finding a surrogate family, riding horses and doing gymnastics.
To see her now, you'd hardly guess.
She is bent over and lopsided and as shrunken as our Nanny had become. She still wears flimsy, colourful 'hippy' robes, but can hardly walk without a helping arm.
Yet musically, she's becoming more adventurous.
'I bought you some Samuel Barber,' I explained.
'Oh Mike.....you know I don't like jazz!'
'No, American classical composer.....bet you're familiar with it when you listen.'
Now she wants Sibelius and even a Grace Williams not yet released on cd, while she used to listen only to Bach.
My brother's a brilliant engineer who's actually building a plane in his back garden and I've been known to write a few books, yet she was always the one with talents which spanned science and arts : while studying Anthropology at Uni she was heavily involved in modern dance and following that Isadora Duncan our mother had idolised.
As I gaze at her painting the colours dance : planets, stars and moons around that small face.
'I'll be here for the rest of my life!' she sighs as we leave her.
For all that people have done to her : our mother's rejection and father's appalling abuse, she could be full of bitterness.
Reaching up, in crippling pain, her love and brightness touch the canvas.
NID FFIN
Nid ffin yw’r ffram.
Rwyt ti’n paentio
Yn dy ystafell di
Y trydydd llawr i lawr ;
Pob drws ar glo.
Rwyt ti’n paentio’r
For-forwyn unig
Yn y pwll craig,
Ei chartref wedi mynd.
‘Mae gormod o greigiau!’
Ti’n esbonio,’ sdim wyneb
Arni hi eto…..
Byddai hi’n drist iawn.’
Unwaith, roeddet ti’n nofio
Ym Mae Abertawe heb ddillad,
Fel pysgodyn, ond nawr
Mae’r dychymyg’n symud.
Nid ffin yw’r fram.
NO BOUNDS (translation)
The frame has no bounds.
You are painting
in your small room
three floors down ;
every door locked.
You are painting
a lonely mermaid
in a rock-pool,
her home retreated.
‘There are too many rocks!’
you explain, ‘ no face
on her yet either…..
she would be sad.’
One time, you went swimming
in Swansea Bay naked,
like a fish ; your imagination
moves with the shoals.
The frame has no bounds.
It's entitled 'The Great Game' and depicts a cosmos with clown-like character at its centre. I love its swirl of colours and the title certainly suggests to me her past interest in Eastern religions, as she was once a devotee of the Divine Light Mission and its very dubious leader.
She lives not far from the Arts Centre in a Care Home.
Sadly, she can't live independently , as it would be too much of a risk.
Nowadays, she speaks very little about that Guru and the meditation which once ruled her life.
Her painting and classical cds are her two interests, though her physical deterioration means that painting is increasingly difficult.
Mentally, she is generally very sharp and her memory varies between excellent and non-existent.
Not since she had a painting exhibited at the Dylan Thomas Theatre based on one of his poems has she been exhibited anywhere and her joy at being alongside many fine artists was wonderful to hear (membership of Arts in the Tawe Valley making this possible).
When my brother and I ( she would insist on the correct grammar!) visited her recently , we took her to view the items placed in storage when she had to leave her Swansea council flat.
She was delighted to open up such a treasure trove from her past, which consisted almost entirely of paintings.
It was such a revelation and from so long ago, that she insisted occasionally they weren't by her ; though the telling initials in the corner told otherwise.
She kept a portrait she'd done of our maternal gran whom she called 'Nan-nan' on the back of the canvas, recalling that was the way 'Nanny' signed letters to her.
When she was a baby our Nanny had virtually brought her up ; my mother rejecting her for fear of contracting the mastitis she had suffered with my brother.
My sister always claimed she was called 'Nanny' just because she filled that crucial role in our upbringing, but notably for her, the only girl.
She also kept another very moving study of bodies superimposed on a landscape, a tribute to a mother and her child who suffered from Muscular Dystrophy. The flowing hills reminded me of the Cambridgeshire chalklands of our youth.
She went to a psychiatric hospital there when she returned from a serious brain injury while in Israel ; my brother, not my parents, travelling out there in that direst of emergencies when she could've died from a fractured skull.
She was knocked back to a second childhood, had to relearn everything. She was burdened by memory loss and epilepsy which prevented her from working.
Now, she likes doing portraits of staff and visitors though I prefer her other ones, like the intriguing one of her refusing to throw the ashes of our mother and stepfather from the stone jetty at Tanybwlch, near Penparcau ( where we grew up).
Her dark-cloaked figure seems to mutate into a monolith.
In Penparcau I clearly recall my brother's model aeroplanes, skilfully fashioned out of the lightest materials, balsa wood and tissue paper, but have few recollections of her.
I believe she must've avoided our house even more than I did : finding a surrogate family, riding horses and doing gymnastics.
To see her now, you'd hardly guess.
She is bent over and lopsided and as shrunken as our Nanny had become. She still wears flimsy, colourful 'hippy' robes, but can hardly walk without a helping arm.
Yet musically, she's becoming more adventurous.
'I bought you some Samuel Barber,' I explained.
'Oh Mike.....you know I don't like jazz!'
'No, American classical composer.....bet you're familiar with it when you listen.'
Now she wants Sibelius and even a Grace Williams not yet released on cd, while she used to listen only to Bach.
My brother's a brilliant engineer who's actually building a plane in his back garden and I've been known to write a few books, yet she was always the one with talents which spanned science and arts : while studying Anthropology at Uni she was heavily involved in modern dance and following that Isadora Duncan our mother had idolised.
As I gaze at her painting the colours dance : planets, stars and moons around that small face.
'I'll be here for the rest of my life!' she sighs as we leave her.
For all that people have done to her : our mother's rejection and father's appalling abuse, she could be full of bitterness.
Reaching up, in crippling pain, her love and brightness touch the canvas.
NID FFIN
Nid ffin yw’r ffram.
Rwyt ti’n paentio
Yn dy ystafell di
Y trydydd llawr i lawr ;
Pob drws ar glo.
Rwyt ti’n paentio’r
For-forwyn unig
Yn y pwll craig,
Ei chartref wedi mynd.
‘Mae gormod o greigiau!’
Ti’n esbonio,’ sdim wyneb
Arni hi eto…..
Byddai hi’n drist iawn.’
Unwaith, roeddet ti’n nofio
Ym Mae Abertawe heb ddillad,
Fel pysgodyn, ond nawr
Mae’r dychymyg’n symud.
Nid ffin yw’r fram.
NO BOUNDS (translation)
The frame has no bounds.
You are painting
in your small room
three floors down ;
every door locked.
You are painting
a lonely mermaid
in a rock-pool,
her home retreated.
‘There are too many rocks!’
you explain, ‘ no face
on her yet either…..
she would be sad.’
One time, you went swimming
in Swansea Bay naked,
like a fish ; your imagination
moves with the shoals.
The frame has no bounds.
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