Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.
Glenys Cour, an acclaimed artist who is just weeks away from her 101st birthday, has had a long and colourful life dedicated to her passion for colour. She lives in Mumbles overlooking Swansea Bay, where she paints every day. Despite being a printmaker, collage and stained-glass artist and teacher, she has never used a paint brush; instead, she prefers the immediacy of working oil paint with torn pieces of fabric and her fingers. Glenys’ paintings have found their way into numerous private and public collections and she has been exhibited widely in Europe and the US.
Glenys’ social circle included the great Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, composer Dan Jones, poet Vernon Watkins, painter Ceri Richards and sculptor Ranald Cour who she would later marry. Her career as a painter meant she mixed with the “intelligentsia of Swansea”. However, this was in stark contrast to her childhood years. Born in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, she was an only child and the daughter of a colliery manager. Her father’s job meant the family moved around the south Wales valleys seven times in total, living in a series of manager’s houses set apart from the workers. During the Depression of the 1930s, the disparity between her relatively comfortable existence and that of the workers and their families left her isolated from other children.
After studying at Cardiff School of Art, where she was taught by celebrated painter Ceri Richards, she took a teaching position in Fishguard, living with her grandmother and aunt. But it wasn’t long before she moved to Swansea to take a job as an art teacher at Glanmor Girls School. She attended evening classes in life drawing at Swansea College of Art, where she met her husband, the sculptor Ronald Cour, who was lecturing there. The couple had a “pretty hectic social life”, as Glenys put it, and it was through this scene that she met Dylan Thomas, a schoolfriend of her husband.
In May 1978, Glenys’ world was torn apart when Ronald died suddenly and unexpectedly, aged just 63. She took a week off work and then threw herself into painting, saving herself from despair and depression by immersing herself in her work. Glennys says she attributes her longevity to the fact that she continues to work, as it has been necessary for her. Overall, she describes her life as “fantastic” and is still excited by her work
Read the full article from The BBC here: Read More
Auto Amazon Links: No products found. Blocked by captcha.