Chloë Holt RCA FRSA - “Môr a Thir” (Sea and Land)

Original painting by artist Chloë Holt RCA FRSA. One of the youngest artists ever to be elected a member of the RCA. Winner of the 2012 Kyffin Williams Drawing Prize, Chloe also, in 2010 won the International Lorenzo il Magnifico prize by the Florence Biennale for works on paper.

From her exhibition “Hiraeth”: “Hiraeth (Welsh pronunciation: [hɪraɨ̯θ, hiːrai̯θ]) is a Welsh word for longing or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire. A profound longing for something, especially one's home. A deep and irrational bond felt with a time, era, place or person. Hiraeth is in the mountains, in the volcanic rock and at the edges of the sea, it is in the trees and in the turbulent waves. It's where the wind calls, and seasons change - announcing that glimmer of sun waiting to fall on your face, the softening of the skies at dusk, relentless calming rain on the earth, and the arrival of silent snows. It is the pull of Wales, my spiritual home.

We are on an Island where a patron Saint still instills hope in lovers hearts. We look across the Menai Straits to the black mountains of Snowdonia in the distance.

Hiraeth is a link to a forgotten past, the language of the soul.”

Oil paint, raw pigment, graphite and gesso on board in antique window frame.