Renowned multidisciplinary artist and writer Robert Macdonald has lived and worked at Penpont for more than forty years. His long-term engagement with the place has inspired a spectacular body of work that celebrates the local area’s distinctiveness.
His depictions of Penpont, the Usk Valley and the Bannau Brycheiniog explore wild nature, farming life and the legends of the area, revealing how the land binds us together, providing us with shared stories, food for our tables and the wonder of wild encounters.
The works exhibited at Found this month are connected by Robert’s own deep sense of belonging with nature. This belonging has its roots in the years Robert spent as a war-time evacuee on Somerset farms and, from the age of 10, in the New Zealand back country. Drawing on these formative experiences, Robert has played a vital role in the development of the Penpont Project’s intergenerational nature restoration efforts. As a knowledgeable elder, he has led guided walks and art workshops for young visitors. He has also shared his observations of how nature has changed on the land since he moved to Penpont. His memorable stories, including a ghostly tale of curlew whistling over his home at night, have given the Penpont Project Partnership a strong sense of both the richness of the land’s past and its potential for restoration.
Robert has shown in the Royal Academy and had his prints displayed in the European Parliament in Brussels as part of an exhibition of eight printmakers from Wales. He was President of the Royal Watercolour Society of Wales for over 15 years and is a past chair of the Welsh Group, the senior association of artists in Wales.
