Rhiannon Rees’ Gentle Painting Project is part of SPAN Arts’ 2024 Love Stories to Nature programme.

For the latest Love Stories to Nature commision, artist Rhiannon Rees is running a gentle painting project and needs dry soil, rocks and pebbles from around Pembrokeshire.

Rhiannon Rees’ site-responsive art merges her interest in sustainable painting practices with her Welsh heritage.

Foraging for pigments and creating Welsh paints is key as it allows her to connect with her ancestoral land.

Once, one side of her family mined the Welsh land, and the other farmed the land.

Rhiannon spends time in locations across Wales collecting industrial waste and natural materials to form her gentle paints.

She uses gentle painting as a way of engaging with the land, and to bring this connection into her studio.

The Gentle Painting Project invites Pembrokeshire communities to map the beautiful colours of their home county.

It needs small samples of earth, rock or clay from your garden to add to a pallet of sustainable paints which will be made and used in workshops to map out Pembrokeshire using its own colours.

These can be brought to the workshops Rhiannon is running in St Davids and Span Arts, Narberth.

In these, communities are invited to learn how to make gentle paints using the earths collected from their samples.

The project will end with a tea and painting party where everyone will be able to use the gentle paints to share their own love stories to Pembrokeshire.

Workshops take place from 10am-12pm on Friday, August 23 in St Davids Memorial Hall and on August 18 at the SPAN Arts Building, Town Moor, Narberth.

There will be a final tea party and sharing of the project on September 28 from 12.30pm to 3.30pm at Templeton Community Hall.

Workshops and the final event are free to attend but advanced booking is required.

Visit span-arts.org.uk to book.