Elizabeth Haines

Elizabeth Haines has lived and worked in Pembrokeshire for over 40 years. Although she works constantly in sketchbooks, her inspiration comes from poetry and music as well as the natural world. She trained as an illustrator, but her work has evolved gradually into a much more flexible and imaginative approach, a style which balances between topography and abstraction. Influences of European and British painting of the early 20th century are apparent.

Her work evokes the landscape of France as well as of Wales and, although grounded in observation, is frequently described as surreal and dreamlike. She has been Artist in Residence at the National Eisteddfod and has a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wales. Her thesis, The Web of Exchange, explores the relationship between the different arts, and she has contributed papers to various journals. Her work is in the collections of the Contemporary Art Society for Wales, The National Library and the University of Wales, as well as many private collections. She exhibits in London, Cardiff and West Wales, as well as at her studio in the Preseli Hills. Elizabeth has been Artist in Residence at a number of schools over the last 30 years, and combines Art and Philosophy in workshops with young people. You can enter Elizabeth’s paintings on a simple level, relishing colours and textures, enjoying apparently inconsequential marks, but from these emerge a larger space and deeper forms, sometimes there are hints of mountains and forests, intimations of buildings and trees and the further you go into the picture the more there is to see. William Gibbs 2012