At the core of Meinir’s new show for us at Ffin y Parc is the ‘Cyfarwydd’: equal parts storyteller and guide, the traditional custodian of story, literature and history in medieval Wales. Drawing on this tradition, Meinir constructs paintings where figures act as conduits of story. Many are portraits, yet resist fixed identity or explicit context, existing instead in a space where past and present converge.
Alongside these cultural references, the work is deeply personal. She draws on memory, family, and landscape. Contemporary figures, often drawn from the artist’s own circle are grounded in the present, while collected objects and precious treasured possessions carry traces of domestic history, labour, and inheritance. The past is alive in the present.
The work is full of references and allusions to the Mabinogion and the book of Aneirin, folk traditions such as the Mari Lwyd, and histories of protest including the Rebecca Riots. Her profound connection and familiarity with our culture and history makes the work sing. In the person of the Cyfarwydd, we have a compelling embodiment of an idea.
Meinir’s work looks in both directions: back at our history and our dreams, and out into the world and our hopes. Wales deserves a place in the modern world, we have treasures much to contribute. But without an appreciation of our inheritance, and an understanding of how it has made us, there can be no meaningful engagement with the future.
Meinir has established herself as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Welsh painting. Her work is held in private collections internationally and in national collections including the National Library of Wales and Bangor University. She is the recipient of the Ivor Davies Prize at the National Eisteddfod of Wales.