Shani Rhys James is one of Wales’ leading painters, awarded an MBE for services to art in 2006. Her work has won the Glyndwr Award, the BP National Portrait Award, the Hunting/Observer Art Prize and the Jerwood Painting Prize.
The Rivalry of Flowers is a collection of 25 new paintings, photographs and other works, to accompany a touring exhibition. Her studies in flowers, wallpapers and domesticity are informed by ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s 1892 story about the plight of women in the home. The paintings are accompanied by an interview with the artist by Francesca Rhydderch, and an art-history essay by Edward Lucie-Smith.
“Arguably one of the most exciting and successful painters of her generation.”
BBC Arts Wales
Edward Lucie-Smith is an internationally known art critic and historian. A number of his art books are used as standard texts; Movements in Art since 1945, first published in 1969, has been in print ever since.
Francesca Rhydderch is a freelance writer and literary editor, based in Aberystwyth. Her first novel, The Rice Paper Diaries, is published by Seren, also in May 2013.