Immersive show brings Kyffin Williams’ rugged Welsh landscapes to life

The paintings of artists such as Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne and David Hockney have been brought to life in all-singing, all-dancing immersive shows in recent years.

Now one of Wales’s most important artists, Sir Kyffin Williams, known for capturing the spectacular landscapes of his homeland with layers of paint thickly applied with a palette knife, has been given the same treatment.

Many of the hundreds of Williams’ pictures held in the store of the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth have been animated and set to music.

Williams’ farmers and sheepdogs make their way through rugged landscapes; his waves seems to crash around the exhibition space; dark grey mountains spring up, as a sun drops into the sea.

Morfudd Bevan, the art curator at the library, said one of the key aims was to bring Williams, who died in 2006, and the library to new audiences, including to more younger people.

She said: “Kyffin is one of Wales’s most important artists and he was embraced by the public. His work romanticised Wales, encapsulated the meaning of the country and the idea of hiraeth [a Welsh word with no direct translation but which means something like a feeling of homesickness for a place that no longer exists or perhaps never did].”

Bevan said the library’s connection to Williams went back to 1950 when it bought an oil painting of the beloved Welsh mountain Cadair Idris from him for £15 at a time he was teaching art in London. It would be worth tens of thousands of pounds now.

After Williams moved back to his birthplace, Ynys Môn (Anglesey) in north Wales, he would often visit the library. Bevan said: “Someone would call ‘Kyffin’s here!’ and people would go down and have a cup of tea with him.”

On his death, Williams left his estate to the library, making it the largest holder of his work in the world – 200 oil paintings, 300 original prints and more than 1,000 pieces on paper.

They are held in a storeroom in the bowels of the library and visitors can make an appointment to view the pieces, or have them brought up to the reading room, where easels are set up to display them.

They can also examine his palette, paint-spattered phone and a pair of boots he used to stride around the hills and valleys, which are also tucked away in the store.

But the idea of the bilingual immersive experience is to put the work front and centre. It is staged in three rooms close to one of the main doors, with views over the town and the sea.

The show is smaller than the ones celebrating the works of Van Gogh, Cézanne and Hockney and consequently much more intimate, with only 10 people allowed in at a time. It is also free.

In the first room, Williams’ story is introduced by the singer Sir Bryn Terfel, himself an avid collector of Williams’ work. In the second, visitors can sit or stand as the landscapes, seascapes and blocks of colour swirl around the walls, floor and ceilings, all accompanied by the sounds of a Welsh chamber-folk string trio.

The third room includes an extraordinary electronic version of a Williams’ self-portrait that visitors can touch to get an impression of the thickness of his paint (the moustache is especially dense).

Dennis Outten, the chief executive of Focal Studios, the main designers of the show, said one of the challenges had been to project Williams’ landscapes without losing any of his texture.

Outten said they spent months living with the paintings from the stores, trying to work out how best to give viewers the sense of Williams’ bold palette knife work.

“We felt the pressure. You want to be true to his life, his work, his methods, and he’s not around to give us any feedback.”

There were sensitive artistic decision to be made, such as how to make his farmers walk and exactly which colours to use as a Williams’ sun set into the sea, but Outten said he felt the artist would have enjoyed the show’s playful feel.

“He was a cheeky chap, an amazing raconteur and an educator. We think he would have liked our approach.”

• The Profiad Kyffin Experience opens to the public on Wednesday 18 November. It will remain at the library for three to five years. Advance booking is highly recommended. For details: library.wales/news/article/step-inside-the-world-of-kyffin-williams