Of our foremost artists

2023-04-08 -

where women could leave the children and then have time to work in the studio.”

After she left Chapter, Kinsey went to the Caribbean to work with underprivileged children for four years before returning and cementing her focus on women.

“I decided I would look at ordinary women with extraordinary lives and I began to draw them and paint them – not just portraits of them, but about them and about their lives,” she says.

Along the way she has been greatly influenced by various philosophical and spiritual works – in particularly, the Gnostic Gospels.

“When I talk about spirituality, it isn’t about a religion, it’s about a sense of who I am, my identity and my relationship to the world around me,” she says. “The texts of the Gnostic Gospels have been a fascinating part of the storytelling process and the characters that I’ve introduced later on in my work.”

Her unique view, which places women centre stage in an exploration of the mysteries of life, is intelligently explored and articulated in her book, which is introduced by Welsh poet and academic Menna Elfyn, pictured right.

“Christine Kinsey is one of the foremost artists in Wales,” says Elfyn. “She has dedicated the best part of five decades to painting and drawing and in so doing has illuminated a world where women had previously existed on the periphery of vision.

“This book, I believe, will delight both enthusiasts and newcomers to her work. Its breadth and depth are certainly worthy of close study, for behind the canvasses is a life committed to painting and an artist who deserves worldwide recognition.

“How grateful we should be that she continues to dazzle us with her unique poetic vision. As a Welsh nation we should celebrate the fact that she belongs to us, first and foremost, while realising also that her paintings of women affirm that we are all indeed an integral part of the wondrous universe.”

Last year Kinsey edited HON: Artistiaid Benywaidd Yng Nghymru / Women Artists In Wales 2022, a book which, like Truth, Lies And Alibis, was published by the H’mm Foundation. With this new book she hopes she will inspire other women to step forward into the limelight.

“I hope that by telling my story in the way that I have, through images and words, it will support other women to tell their own their stories and know that, as women from Wales, in all areas of work, their story is as important as anyone else’s,” she says.

■ Truth, Lies And Alibis is out now, published by the H’mm Foundation. Copies can be ordered from inquiries@thehmmfoundation.co.uk