After gaining yet another accolade for its services in excellence, North Wales based Art Gallery Ffin y Parc is pleased to be hosting three highly collectable artists, including two Wales-based painters Matthew Wood and Gilly Thomas RCA, and a collection by Maurice Cockrill RA, in a new exhibition this month. The award winning gallery is celebrating after being named as one of the champions for the 2018 Welsh Enterprise Awards hosted by SME-News and has been awarded Best Fine Art Gallery 2018 - North Wales. Gallery owner Ralph Sanders said he was delighted with the award: “The Welsh Enterprise Awards acknowledges businesses and enterprises which they feel are helping to make Wales the vibrant place it is today.”

Welshpool-based artist Matthew Wood has produced almost 90 paintings for this latest show, his biggest collection to date, which includes a mixture of interiors and landscapes. Matthew was born in 1973, and trained at Middlesex, Birmingham and The School of Art, University of Wales. He lives with his wife and two children. Of his work he said: “I am best known for my interior and landscape paintings which have a predominantly Welsh theme. Each piece is unique and usually produced on location in one sitting.” To coincide with her 70th Birthday, painter Gilly Thomas RCA has produced a new collection of work. Gilly lives near Bangor and is a member of the Royal Cambrian Academy. Ralph added: “Gilly’s work is structured and dramatic at the same time, like a scene from a play, or snatched from a dream or even a nightmare. Her paintings let you into a strange internal world which we are privileged to enter.”

Maurice Cockrill RA 1936 – 2013, was one of the most versatile painters to have emerged in the UK since the Second World War. His work is constantly evolving and defying conventional categorisation. He has said: “The artists I’ve admired most like Picasso, are the protean ones. I’d rather be changing shape than just be doing the same thing time after time.”

Ralph added: “These selected works, some unseen till now, span three decades and show paintings created in London and in his Conwy Valley Studio. We were honoured to host Maurice Cockrill's final major exhibition at Ffin y Parc Gallery in May 2013.”