Looking Out

'Over the last twenty five years, almost single-handedly,
Peter Lord has transformed a collection of poorly
understood evidence of art created in Wales, and lazy
theoretical assumptions about it, into a discipline in its
own right, equipped with analytical frameworks and
supported by an accumulating body of knowledge.'
-Andrew Green, Wales Arts Review (on The Tradition)

The six sequential essays in this collection provide a
narrative of a century and a half of Welsh painting,
written with an emphasis on issues of social class
and national identity. Through his earlier writing,
Peter Lord has contributed to the establishment of an
historical tradition of Welsh painting, but because it
does not feature in the wider story of western art history
as presently told, the work revealed continues to be
perceived as marginal, existing in isolation from ideas
and movements in other countries. These essays break
new ground by discussing the concerns of Welsh painters
not only in domestic terms but also in the context of the
ways in which artists in other parts of Europe and in the
United States reacted to the common underlying causes
of those concerns. The author challenges the idea that the
work of Welsh painters is relevant only to the evolution
of their own communities and, through confident and
detailed analysis, validates their pictures also in terms of
the arts of other western cultures.