Chloë Holt RCA FRSA - “Our History”

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.

“I’ve always been drawn to the simple, organic shape beautiful simplicity of hand-carved wooden bowls…My studio collection has expanded year after year: From 18th Century Scandinavian Root Bowls to 19th Century Welsh Sycamore Dairy Bowls; and many curious ovid forms inbetween.

The bowls resonate of a time and place and yet they share the feeling of timelessness. The hands and eyes of their careful maker - have created an object capable of offering goodness and nourishment, transforming the natural banal material, and literally ‘in turn’ skillfully revealing the woods innate beauty and soul.

The bowls catch light on their edges, their basins fill with illumination as the changing hours bring luminosity which envelops them and chases around their pure forms.”

From her exhibition “Hiraeth”:

“Hiraeth (Welsh pronunciation: [hɪraɨ̯θ, hiːrai̯θ]) is a Welsh word for longing or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a sense of regret (especially in the context of Wales or Welsh culture) 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 upon a small hand-carved wooden diary bowl which speaks of the inner self. Hiraeth is a link to a forgotten past, the language of the soul.”

Oil paint and gesso on board. Unframed size 51 w x 39 h cm.