John Rogers was born in Cardiff in 1939 and later attended Cardiff College of Art studying under John Roberts, David Tinker and Phil Jennings. His work experience was in a circus, theatre, television and as an interior designer before painting full time and opening his gallery in St. Davids, Pembrokeshire in 1972. His Gallery is in Peters Lane St. Davids. www.johnrogersartist.co.uk

John has exhibited widely across the UK in various Galleries and with his major exhibitions being: 1985 – Taith ym Morocco – UK wide culminating in Donmar Warehouse, Covent Garden; 2008 – Retrospective Exhibition: From Africa to Iceland, a Visual Celtic Voyage – National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth. (A book of the same name was published by Gomer Press in December 2007 but is no longer in print.); 2020 – John Rogers 80 Exhibition – Hosted at MOMA (Museum of Modern Art Machynlleth)

This final exhibition comprised work from a 63-year period, including examples in various media, which developed into wild landscapes made in Pembrokeshire and the “Africa to Iceland” comprising the Celtic Sea Road, which included Morocco, Galicia, Brittany, Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and Iceland.

“From Africa to Iceland” is an artist’s journey through space and time, an exploration of the Atlantic coast in search of beauty in nature and wilderness; for the way people relate to their landscape through custom, vernacular architecture, language and work, and the ways in which these are linked beyond the national boundaries which now exist. Above all it is a search for beauty through the discipline of painting.

“Our comprehension of the world around us is conditioned by the limitations of our faculties and senses. The way in which the eye and brain link to process data when we observe or are moved by that which exists outside ourselves, is essentially unique to our species or possibly even to us as individuals. This mystery is at the heart of my work.”