Back in March, I was saddened to hear of the death of Welsh painter and former lecturer at Swansea University, Osi Rhys Osmond. He had suffered a long battle with cancer and passed away at the age of 72 years. I had only become acquainted with Osmond’s work during my third year of undergraduate study, on the module ‘Art in Wales’. Since then, I had further researched his artworks, finding myself increasingly drawn to both his painting style and the Welsh socio-historical issues which he explores through his art.
As part of a project in the ‘Art in Wales’ module, in which you had to research one artwork from the National Library of Wales art collection that represented Wales in some form, I found myself immediately drawn to Osmond’s painting entitled, ‘Domen Lo, Bargoed’. The piece, with it’s quiet sense of desolation and loss trapped in the melancholy blue of the paint, was something which I found very affecting and moving. This piece is just one of several by Osmond which utilised the landscape of South Wales and the area affectionately known as ‘the Valleys’. His works sought to challenge preconceived stereotypes of the Welsh landscape, as well as seeking to raise awareness of the injustices that have befallen the community in which he grew up in. Bargoed is a town in the Rhymny Valley, South Wales and is located just ten minutes from Osmond’s hometown of Sirhowy.
There is a very similar painting, also by Osmond and likely to be a partner piece to this painting housed in the Ceredigion Museum, titled Domen Glo (1999). This translates rather more straightforward and less ambiguously as ‘Coal Heap’. Although it does not state ‘Bargoed’ in the title, the landscape is clearly a reference to the town, for it is almost identical to that seen in Domen Lo, Bargoed. Bargoed was immersed in the Coalmining Industry during the early to mid-twentieth century and both Osmond’s father and grandfather were coalminers at nearby Cwmfelinfach Colliery, so were likely to have been familiar with the Bargoed Colliery. In both works, the titles are a reference to the slag waste and remnants left over from the coal mining. Yet in Domen Lo, Bargoed, the word ‘tip’ could be considered as both a reference to the slag heaps of shale and other waste material left upon the hills, or it could be taken in another sense, to reflect the symbolic rubbish ‘tip’ that Osmond felt South Wales had been left as; struggling economically and socially, being left to restore its pride after the loss of its major Industry.
As a result of Osmond’s passing, I certainly feel that there is a hole left behind, not only in the Welsh art world, but that of a wider art world that has lost a strong cultural and socio-political artistic voice.
Artist: Osi Rhys Osmond
Oil on canvas, 51 x 76 cm
(Copyright: Mr Osi Rhys Osmond; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation)
Rebecca Jones (BA) 