Emily Faludy

There is a certain kind of magic that seems to happen when you commit yourself to an intensive, sustained period of work in an environment you find inspiring, in supportive creative company. It's like the distillation of a perfect creative life - for the time period you are there, you get to focus on your work, explore ideas with people who get it, and be inspired and encouraged. Having that support is really grounding, and makes an activity which might otherwise seem a bit random (going to paint in a remote spot for two weeks), seem totally achievable and welcoming. My time at the Mawddach Estuary was my second experience of being on residency; my first was in West Wales, in Ferwig in 2022 at CreateSpace Wales, so I knew a little of what to expect – mainly that residencies can be strange and wondrous things!
 
As I remembered from before, for me, there is a period of disorientation upon arrival and for several days afterwards on a residency. I am a landscape painter, working outside on location, and had chosen this residency for its access to geography which I knew I would find inspiration in. It didn't disappoint - the landscape was so awe inspiring and varied, and unfamiliar to me so at first I couldn’t ‘get my eye in’ – I hadn’t fully worked out what I was interested in, and how I wanted to paint it. The first few days I was thus a little scattergun in my approach, painting subjects fairly randomly and not being entirely sure what to settle on. I made several paintings that I really hated, and had to scrape them off as I didn’t want to waste the paint. (I work thickly, in oil paints, with a palette knife). Near the end of my first week I travelled up to Angelsey, which although much more in my comfort zone in terms of subject matter (wild and coastal), was too far away to travel to regularly. Luckily I discovered interesting places closer to home in the second week and felt far more like I’d found my feet; I painted at Lake Gwynant, about an hour away, and a favourite haunt of Kyffin Williams, one of my favourite painters. In the last few days I made two larger scale diptychs at Cregennan Lakes, a twenty minutes drive from the residency. This was the time I felt I was most ‘in my flow’ with my work, and time seemed to just disappear as I stood and painted all day long. There was so much to visually translate there that I would have struggled on just one canvas; working on two paintings next to each other allowed me to expand into the longer view comfortably and more adequately capture the sweeping, mountainous vista in the expansive, gestural way that I wanted to. 

Adding to the sense of artistic community and comradery, I particularly enjoyed posing for a portrait session with Jake's drawing school, Draw Brighton, and also an impromptu private view night with the neighbours and their guests, where I got to share the work and the experience, which was a lovely way to finish the residency. I experienced a period of mourning after leaving the Mawddach - of missing the landscape that I’d just ‘settled into’, visually, for all the potential paintings that I could’ve made if I’d stayed, as well as the company and support of my hosts. For me, painting daily, without interruption or spending much time on the usual admin that comes with being an artist provides a kind of ‘jumpstart’ in my practice, and I'm hugely grateful that such places exist for artists to delve deeper into their work. I’m already thinking about where I could go next, and the paintings I could make there…
 
Works from Emily’s residency can be viewed at
https://www.emilyfaludy.com/mawddachresidency