Stuart Evans

Participating in The Land as Other

I am inspired to produce fine art prints by my location here in Mid Wales. Having lived and worked in Ceredigion for over forty years I am fascinated by the history and culture of the people and landscape. Recently retiring from the Ceredigion museum I am now able to spend more time working on lino printing, etching and drypoint techniques which I multi layer or hand colour.

Themes which I return to are dry stone walling and field boundaries. I include a quote from friend and farmer Alun Edwards, from Caecoch, Rhydymaen, Dolgellau:

"Drystone walls are a central part of our heritage , and also provide durable field boundaries which double as stock shelters , as well as harbouring lichen and mosses on their surfaces. When fields were formed, the stones from ploughing were collected for boundary formation and while fences last maybe 20 years a well built wall can last 300. I’ve restored and rebuilt miles in my time at Caecoch, thanks to 70% funding from the E.U./W.G rural development fund. It allowed me to employ Dermot as a waller, and he would demolish an old tumbledown wall and rebuild it at 5-10 metres a day depending on the quality of stone and terrain. Every cubic metre of a 1m20cm high wall meant handling about 1 tonne of stone. On the mountain there are old cattle walls which were only 4ft high, built during the enclosure act, repaired by prisoners of the napoleonic wars maybe and repaired again by Italian and Germans during WW2."