By Fred Williams and Elysia Gilman
My Love of Art - Fred Williams (Prep 2004-2011)
My love of art really began with Mr Roebuck at the Prep School. I remember drawing charcoal waterfalls and a tiger at the Welsh Mountain Zoo. And for long summer holidays in Crete, Mum would pack – alongside lilos and beach balls – sketchbooks and paints.
There’s something about Crete’s rocky, mountainous west coast that demands to be painted; the precise quality of the light, the vivid palette that changes through the day and explodes at sunset, the wind that whips up the sea into a tumult.
A Kyffin Williams exhibition on Anglesey that I visited aged 11 provided me with the first glimpse art’s power to capture not just how a landscape looks, but how it feels, to dramatize the connection between a place and emotions. And that’s a theme that I’ve traced through the other artists I love: Frank Auerbach, John Virtue, Tacita Dean, South African landscape painter Walter Meyer. I’m also a huge fan of Anselm Kiefer and his epic works, both in scale and ideas.
After school, I won a place on the Foundation Year at the Royal Drawing School in London.
What an incredible experience; a year spent at the beating heart of creative life in the UK, totally immersed in art in so many forms and glimpsing the possibilities out there both in terms of media and ideas. And it’s thanks to RDS that I find myself on the Fine Art programme at Newcastle University, a great course in another artistically vibrant city.
Right now I’m locked down, back home in Snowdonia, which is no bad place for a landscape painter to be.
I take landscape and portrait commissions. You can see some of my work on Instagram @fredcanpaint.
Life as a Lockdown Artist – Elysia Gilman (RPS 2013-2018)
Having completed an Art Foundation at Loughborough University I could see that Covid was going to disrupt the rest of my degree, so I decided to start up my own art business instead, which is what I’d always dreamed of doing and am really passionate about.
I’ve been really lucky during lockdown to be taking on a lot of commissions as well as getting my portraits of Robert Rinder and Samira Ahmed featured on Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Week.
I’ve also enjoyed painting cricket scenes from the IPL, two of which were shared by ESPN’s cricket social media and one by Ben Stokes himself! Two of my cricket paintings were also featured in The Cricketer Magazine.
I was also interviewed for a podcast about my artwork which you can listen to here: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9hbmNob3IuZm0vcy8xODc0ZmUxMC9wb2RjYXN0L3Jzcw/episode/ZDMyNDNiNmYtMTZkYi00NDJlLWI0NmYtNmNjOWE1NjczZmYy?ep=14
I’ve also been working closely with Cannon Hall Farm in Yorkshire (https://www.cannonhallfarm.co.uk) to create illustrations for a children’s colouring book and hopefully will be working on designing some more merchandise for them soon.
They are a family farm attraction that have their own TV show on Channel 4 and have appointed me as their designer to work on a new range of merchandise for them.
I’ve been keeping very busy as I’m currently enrolled on a portrait painting course at the Realist Academy of Art Walton Hall that runs every Saturday for a year, which is teaching me lots of new skills and more traditional painting techniques.
Cannon Farm and Elysia
“We were very impressed with Elysia’s tenacity and creativity during lockdown as she proposed several ideas to us over a period of a few weeks.
"Her sample illustrations really caught the eye of our marketing team and we decided to commission her to work with us on our first-ever colouring book - which is being handed out to over 8,000 children as a Christmas gift.
“We found her a delight to work with, efficient in meeting deadlines and open to change and ideas. This was not a simple project - the goalposts had to change several times due to Covid restrictions but Elysia unwaveringly kept her cool and delivered every deadline.
“We are overjoyed with the final result and have had many compliments already about the quality of it. In fact, we are so impressed now we’ve seen it in person that we are ordering more for our gift shop in the new year and plan to continue our relationship with her to develop a coordinating range of merchandise.”
"Cannon Hall Farm is the host farm for Channel 5 TV Shows Springtime on the Farm, This Week on the Farm, Friday on the Farm. Elysia’s work will be seen by almost 20,000 visitors and displayed to our social media channels."
As a school we were delighted when Sarah James, the school's pupil liaison officer commissioned a painting of her father Michael James, Principal (Easter 1996-December 2006) from Art's scholar Elysia Gilman.
Miss James was thrilled with the painting of her father, who having taken up his position as Principal of the new Rydal Penrhos School was given the role of effecting the merger of Rydal School and Penrhos College.
The Penrhos site was closed in 1999 and the transfer of girls to the Rydal site took place in September of that year.
Mr James gave up his role in 2007 due to Motor Neurone Disease. He had a huge impact on the school during his time at the helm.
Elysia enjoyed a fantastic final year as a member of the Rydal Penrhos Community, beginning when she emerged victorious in the under 18 category of the annual Museum of Modern Art for Wales competition, and her work was put on display at a high-profile exhibition held in Machynlleth.
Those attending the exhibition also recognised her talent and she received the Public vote for her portrait of her sister Lydia.
The year culminate d with her move to study Art at the University of Loughborough.
