Welsh Artists Talking

Featuring Brendan Stuart Burns, Ivor Davies, David Garner, Robert Harding, Alfred Janes, Christine Jones, Jonah Jones, David Nash, Terry Setch and Lois Williams.

This collection of interviews with artists from Wales is further evidence of the renaissance of the visual arts in the country. The ten artists talking to Tony Curtis vary in practice from figurative and abstract painters through a ceramicist to sculptors in stone, wood and metal. Their work and words provide, at once, a history of twentieth century art in Wales and a guide to making in the twenty-first century.

Welsh Artists Talking includes perhaps the last ever interview given by he late Alfred Janes, friend of Dylan Thomas, whose career spanned sixty years. His contemporary Jonah Jones talks about the artist as artisan, while at the other end of the age spectrum Brenda Stuart Burns reflects on the influence of location on his work. The book also includes David Nash, the internationally acclaimed sculptor, and artists such as Christine Jones and Robert Harding, whose reputations are now burgeoning.

Collectively, the book explores the relationship between art and place, identity, spirituality and the market place. With their emphasis on working practice and historical context these interviews are an invaluable record.

Editor Tony Curtis is Professor of Poetry at the University of Glamorgan where he directs an MPhil in Writing. He has published 26 books, including nine poetry collections, including Heaven''s Gate (2001). A selection of his poetry has recently been translated and published in Armenia. He is also the editor of several anthologies including After the First Death, a volume of war writing (2007).