Shani Rhys James MBE

Shani Rhys James was born in Australia in 1953. Her mother was Australian and her father was Welsh. The family moved to the UK when Shani was 9 or 10. A few years after completing her training at St. Martin's School of Art, she moved to rural Powys with her husband and young family. She has been living there ever since.

Her work has been attracting attention and wining prizes since the late 1980's. She won the Gold Medal for Fine Art at the National Eisteddfod in 1992. In 2003 she won the Jerwood Painting Prize. She was made an MBE in 2006 for services to Art.

For over 35 years she has been exhibiting throughout Wales, with regular shows in London and further afield. Her work is found in many major public collections including the national Museum of Wales, The Arts Council of England and Columbia University, New York. She is now regarded as one of Wales's foremost living painters.

Her work is instantly recognizable. Her figures are almost exclusively women, and she frequently uses aspects of herself. These unflinching portraits are dramatic, frequently drawing on memories of her mother's life and career as an actress. The work is intense, uncompromising and psychologically probing. Her figures inhabit a world filled with domestic trappings: crockery, furniture, wallpaper and extravagant jugs of flowers. Yet her attitude to these surroundings and her role within them is notably ambiguous.

Shani's work is always vigorous and thrilling. It hums and vibrates with suppressed, directed power and the potential for violence and confrontation. But there is vulnerability too. An acknowledgement, perhaps, (though not necessarily an acceptance) of our isolation. Her figures are participants and observers at the same time.

We were followers and admirers of Shani’s work before we even dreamed of opening a gallery. We are therefore very pleased to be welcoming Shani to Ffin y Parc.