Y Gaer, Art Gallery & Museum, Brecon | 29th June 15th September 2024.
In collaboration with David Thomas (words) and Joe Bayliss (sound)

In late 2019, prompted by an ongoing group of drawings he was making, visual artist Keith Bayliss offered an idea to his friend and long-time collaborator, the poet David Thomas, that they look at a collaboration concerning aspects of loss. It proved a timely conversation, its topic soon became very relevant. Several themes preoccupy Keith’s work. Love, loss, and the idea of the individual, a “Wandering Soul” journeying through life, facing adversity, looking for solace, looking for consolation. Here he responds to this theme by creating an environment, a “home”, and a place where the soul can exist and grow free from anguish, conflict and tragedy, a place of rest, a place of peace – a sanctuary.

Image of Keith Bayliss at Y Gaer, Brecon by Bernard Mitchell, June 2024

“We are lost, we are adrift…” as the artist stated in his exhibition – Hortus Conclusus/The Enclosed Garden – at Mission Gallery, Swansea in 2012, where he first collaborated with his son Joseph. This exhibition was a seminal experience. Here, in this exhibition, Keith has found an opportunity to create a place of peace, where we are not adrift, where we are not lost. A place to grow and flourish. A home for the Souls of the world – his Maes Eneidiau /Field of Souls.

The drawings in ink on paper are a part of this series of work for Field of Souls and reflect the atmosphere of worry and fear and sadness that inhabits the world in which we live. My response is to use old and familiar characters, a bird, a floating head, the Moon and imagine Souls looking for and journeying to a place of rest. I am done with sadness, these characters are breaking free of this world, to find solace, a heaven, a place of rest.

The artist would like to thank – Y Gaer for hosting the exhibition, Amanda Roderick for her friendship, encouragement and support. Sally and Roger Moss for just being there with knowledge and opinions freely given. David Moore for a supportive chance conversation. Photographer Bernard Mitchell for his image. Artist Clive Hicks-Jenkins for his words and the artist’s son Joseph Bayliss and poet David Thomas for wanting to be a part of this project.