Malcolm has returned! After telling us that his last show would be his last show, he has spent the last year or so creating a large collection of new work. What else is there to do? He says that this will be his last show!
Starting with accidental marks and combinations of colour, Malcolm makes these landscapes from his memories and his imagination. He dresses them in green and lichen, emerging or else dissolving in the mists formed in the shadowy valleys as the sunlight penetrates. There is precision and detail, but the work is also impressionistic and lyrical.
His training as an architect shows in the buildings that he puts into his landscapes, but it is easy to imagine him designing the cliffs and mountains as well. Enjoying the process of bringing them into being, rock and mist coalescing at his bidding, by his hand, under his watchful eye with the sweep of a brush and the accretion of tiny marks and separate details.
Rainbows fade in a moment, mists dissolve in minutes, becoming memory as you watch. Birds are fleeting, here then gone. Men pass through, houses are built and become ruins. Even the mountains will fall eventually, ground to dust.
In their quiet fashion, these works are elegiac. They have a grandeur, and they are a meditation on time, on transience and permanence.
Malcolm is 91. He lives in Halkyn. Over decades he has built a devoted audience. His work continues to fascinate and entrance.