Nuala Dunn

Inspired by 30 years of exploring and teaching outdoors in Snowdonia Nuala's work tries to express the elemental feel of Snowdonia’s landscapes and seascapes. It also draws on her experiences of travels further afield in remote and wild places.

She is intrigued with the relationship between things; how the wind alters the cloud, how the moon pulls the tide, how the sun sets and rises as we turn on our planet, through time circling the sun. She likes to explore how the seeming constant of a mountain relates to the fleeting moments when light catches on an edge, a surface, a ridge or how the beach is eroded by the tide, rocks worn down by the crashing of waves. Living on the west coast of Wales, between the mountains and the sea, means these elemental forces are tangible aspects of her life. Some winters she feels she's leaning to her right whilst walking north with the south westerlies pounding her left side.

Nuala hopes that through her paintings people will get a sense of what it’s like to experience being in a place at a particular moment; its moods and energy, its temporal nature and something of those seeming constants which gradually change over a longer period of time. Slate once laid down under a tropical sea, upended and quarried, and the sea level rising.

Memory also influences her work particularly those sensory experiences of wild winds, torrential rain, warm sunlight, a calm paddle in her canoe on the river. These visceral memories and experiences permeate her work and help her to evolve her work subconsciously.

She loves painting “en plein air” but she is more interested in mood and elemental forces than trying to capture an exact representation of a particular place.

Nuala has recently completed an MA in Fine art at Aberystwyth University. Her work has become more abstract as a result and you can find this work on her website www.nualadunn.com

Contact Nuala