John Cleal

Although John Cleal (1929-2007) was born in South Africa, he considered himself a Welsh artist after moving to Fishguard in 1961. He was a painter and a sculptor and founded in 1970 Workshop Wales Gallery, a respected gallery in West Wales that has held together and strengthened the local artistic community for 50 years.

Cleal began with training as a signwriter, followed by his own weekly illustration column in a London newspaper and becoming cartoonist for a Norwegian paper. Cleal then returned to South Africa, where he established and ran his design studio for a decade before being invited to London to become a partner in another design firm. After two years, Cleal moved to Fishguard, in Pembrokeshire, with his wife and children, where he took up farming and set up Workshop Wales as a hybrid art gallery and crafts compound.

Cleal’s first medium was paint, and his preferred inspiration was Pembrokeshire – its people, its landscape, and especially its stone. Pembrokeshire’s coastal tones are constant throughout his canvases, on top of which may be figurative images reminiscent of cave paintings. Cleal seamlessly unites these elements with Celtic symbols and chains, slivers of landscape or sky, abstraction, and text, inexplicably drawing these elements together in an intense yet inherently decipherable exploration of his adopted hometown and personal journey. Cleal never shied away from the ruggedness of Pembrokeshire’s coast – he celebrated its essence through his palette and accepted it as a primordial setting for his work.

When Cleal chose to sculpt, he chose to carve. Of the sculpture methods, cutting away, rather than building up, is the more grueling discipline – a sculptor can never undo a cut. Cleal’s sculpture Sgadan Abergwuan is a celebration of Fishguard’s herring industry, on permanent show at the quay. Upon his passing, Cleal’s sculpture Sun Lover was placed at Lower Town, Fishguard, honouring his thirty years of endearment and contribution to the area. Sun Lover is a reclining figure, a serenely peaceful adoration of the natural world – an unmitigated statement of reverence and a prompt for the viewer to do as the title suggests.

Throughout his career Cleal donated his work, including paintings to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham and the Velindre Cancer Centre, sculpture to Withybush Hospital, the city of St. Davids, and Cwmaman Public Hall, as well as conventionally distributing to private collectors.