CAG.510 Mary Lloyd-Jones, Hat Found in Venice, 1974, acrylic on canvas, 122 x 182.5 cm. Purchased, 1976 (Gibson Bequest Fund). © the artist

For this WORK OF THE WEEK, we’re jetting off to the Adriatic!

Hat Found in Venice (1974) is a dazzling painting by Mary Lloyd-Jones that combines two visual languages. The artist was ‘aiming to combine geometric abstraction of the floor of St Mark’s with a figurative subject.’ It was completed following a visit to the Italian island city with her daughter, Gudrun, who was then a teenager and is the figure at the heart of this work.

Based in Aberystwyth, painter and printmaker Mary Lloyd-Jones (b.1934) explores the beginnings of language in her work. In 1966, she started to exhibit publicly but it wasn’t until 1989 that she became a full-time artist. ‘At times I felt that I belonged to the wrong sex,’ the artist has reflected, ‘and was living in the wrong time and place to be a successful artist.’

Hat Found in Venice (1974) by Mary Lloyd-Jones is featured in THE GIBSON BEQUEST 1919-2019: Selecting, Collecting & Philanthropy.

And thinking of the Floating City, Ireland is represented at the Venice Biennale 2019 by Eva Rothschild’s The Shrinking Universe.