DAN LLYWELYN HALL - TEN YEARS OF TREES
Hergest Puzzles 2021
Dan Llywelyn Hall is an artist hot-foot from his beloved mountain fastness in Wales – a converted Chapel now a studio sanctuary for his remarkable work. Yet he is equally delighted to open his latest exhibition in Shepherd Market among the louche bistros and élite clubs of Mayfair. Dan brings his whole self there – poured into the drama and depth of the trees he has painted for the past ten year. Not just sketched and drawn – but defended from destructon.
If Amor Arborum . love of trees, sounds a soppy title for a show, think again. Walk into the space of Trees Heritage and Protest and the strength of this brilliant artist’s connection with nature hits you . These are strong magnificent oaks and elms, trees that have stood the test of centuries and look determined to take on the next era.
Ten years in the making, these stolid stalwart mysterious miracles of nature power have captured Dan in his elegant tweed suit and uncompromising defiance of destruction, from Euston Square and his turbulent defence of its destruction to Sheffield’s urban streets where he joined the activists as they battled against the wanton felling of hundreds of stout Victorian planting,With success he added when we talked about it. He explains
“Trees form nature’s architecture and embody the spirit and history of place. They are as individual as any human being and possess a life force that reveals itself when we the take the time to commune in their presence.’
A surprise collaboration almost incidentally discovered fuses Dan’s painting with poet Robert Minhinnick in their joint book The Dunes a celebration of the Merthyr Mawr dunes of South Wales Robert’s poetry brings the best of Gerard Manly Hopkins to mind in his poem Sanderling
Sanderlings where the waves break, 7 of them in step.
Maybe their symmetry is prayer. And surely celebration
Perhaps they will teach me to dance, these sanderlings
Always in prime numbers
3.7.,11
As I muse on marine
mathematics, yes 17 on the shore
But now 19 surely the answer, no now 31
These 43
These 57
Surely the answer as I work out the square root of sanderlings.
No not about trees at all, but the spiritual connections in nature this poet shares with the pictures, the oils the sketches of the trees that guard each plain and valley, each hedge and stream, now adopted - and defended -by the resolute handsome champion of the natural world who is unwaveringly, Dan Llwelyn Hall
The Green Bell Jar
