My name is Siân Barlow. I am an artist, a woman, a mother, a sister, a daughter. I work too as a personal assistant and carer to a disabled woman. I used to work as a health and social care advocate, more recently I’ve changed direction into becoming an artist and writing.
I arrived in Wales in 1977 as a baby, coming with my family from Brixton, where I was born. I have since made my life and my home here – I live and make my work in the Gwendraeth Valley in Carmarthenshire.
I am of mixed English and Mauritian heritage. I am marked by a sense of profound belonging here, and at the same time by discontinuity and separation. Dw i mor falch, mor ddiolchgar. I am so grateful for the gifts of growing up with the Welsh language and culture. At the same time I have a sense in which my identity is precarious and complex.
My art practice is rooted here in the Gwendraeth Valley, and in deepening my capacity for attention and care. I often begin with drawing and writing. My work is exploratory, an on-going investigation. I am inspired by walking in the local landscape – this is a complicated landscape, it is a post-coalmining area, the westernmost of the Welsh coalfields. There are moments when something shines through the things around us, ordinary and damaged though they may seem to be – we might call it beauty, or we might feel it as joy – I try to notice and give attention to those moments.
This website, like my work, is work in progress. It is an offering to you, to create a space, an opening. You and I have much in common: we are here in the amazing, complex, painful and beautiful world, right now in this moment.
You can find my work on the artwork page of this website. You can also subscribe to my blog or my instagram if you want to join me on the journey. If you want to ask me something specific, please feel free to send me a message.
And finally, because this is an “about page”, a web page concerned with identity – mine, yours – and because identity is difficult territory, I will share a poem here with you.
sian barlow 