Carys’ practice is rooted in painterly abstraction, exploring how lived experience can be translated through colour, gesture, repetition and material. Working across painting, drawing and ceramics, she is interested in the point at which a mark begins to suggest an image without fully becoming one. Forms emerge, disappear and return across her work, gradually developing into a personal visual vocabulary that moves between the familiar and the unresolved.
At the centre of her practice is a fascination with the handmade mark. Repetition plays an important role: a single gesture can shift through changes in pressure, speed, scale and density, becoming something different each time it is made. Through layering, erasure, addition and subtraction, Carys allows surfaces to develop slowly and intuitively, leaving traces of earlier decisions visible. Rather than resolving these completely, she is interested in allowing uncertainty, awkwardness and imperfection to remain present within the finished work.
Her paintings draw from both interior and exterior worlds. Observations of landscape, light, natural forms and intimate domestic environments are absorbed alongside memory and emotional experience, resurfacing indirectly through colour and form. Rather than illustrating a particular place or feeling, these references become shapes and gestures that sit somewhere between observation, memory and abstraction. Through this process, painting becomes a way of noticing and returning, a means of finding connections between the world experienced externally and the quieter internal world through which it is understood.
Carys graduated with a First-Class BA (Hons) in Drawing and Print from the University of the West of England (UWE), Bristol, in 2022. During this time, she contributed to the curatorial team and exhibited in Objects in Mirrors Are Closer Than They Appear at Centrespace Gallery, Bristol, led by Berlin-based curator Jan-Philipp Fruehsorge. Her work was also included in What Is Painting at LUCA School of Arts in Ghent, Belgium, in collaboration with the UWE Fine Art Cluster.
Exhibitions & Education :
Art and Design foundation Diploma in Cardiff Arts Academy 2019 : Grade distinction.
First Class BA Honours in Drawing and Print , UWE 2019-2022.
Center Space Gallery, Bristol. Featured in ‘Objects in mirrors are closer than they appear’ , curated by Jan-Phillip Fruehsorge, 2022.
Luca Art school, Ghent, Belgium. ‘The narrative in painting ’ 2022.
Open Home, Bridgend, Wales. Curated by Andrea Curtis, myself and four other artists, 2023.
Fringe Bath Arts Festival. Featured in NEW ONLY:ONLY NEW exhibition curated by Chloe Dowsett , May 2026.
Mission Gallery Swansea, July 2026.
Brewing art residency with Sophie Tea Art, July/ August 2026.
Group show, Rust Studio, Penzance, Cornwall, August 2026.
