Opens 8th July - Private View Saturday 9th July 3.00 to 6.00 pm

Mad Shadows – Mute Ghosts .

The Lockdown Effect on five artists

Curated by Jess Woodrow

Wander anywhere in the countryside at dusk when colours fade and daylight slips away, you get a sense of something other-worldly lurking; a world of ancient mysteries and shadowy traditions.

Such moments are the inspiration for these five artists showing at Narberth`s Oriel Q Gallery, for their paintings, etchings and sculpture.

Jess Woodrow, from Abergavenny, identifies closely with the landscape she paints, particularly as late summer sliding into autumn produces the feeling of being between two worlds.

Whereas her daughter Sophie Woodrow peoples this strange gap with even stranger delicate but definitely collectable, porcelain beings, full of attractive but mysterious detail .

The fairy tale quality is carried over in the work of Pembrokeshire artist Flora McLachlan ,whose poetic images are steeped in myth and legend. She studied literature at Oxford and says her work “sets the scene for a story, but leaves it untold”. creating the dreamlike quality of an ancient landscape.

Forgotten traditions and tales are also the inspiration for her sister Rosie McLachlan. Living and working in Northumberland she uses the blood red clay from a local riverbed to create her spirit houses and totemic sculptures, carefully fired over four days in an anogama kiln without the use of a pyrometer - a method which requires constant attention to regulate the temperature.

Cardiff-based Jaqueline Alkema is the fifth exhibitor in this group. Her interest in Dutch and Flemish portraits has led to creating arresting female images . Elegantly dressed, they stare out at you, engaging the onlooker in almost brazen invitation to a challenge.

If you are up for something different post lockdown, then this must be for you.