AN INTERNATIONALLY-ACCLAIMED Ffestiniog artist has been awarded one of the UK’s most sought-after arts accolades.

Blaenau Ffestiniog sculptor David Nash was announced as winner of the Charles Wollaston award at the 2016 Royal Academy Summer Exhibition recently. The exhibition has been running nonstop since 1769 and is currently Europe’s oldest ‘open submission’ exhibition.

This year the spectacle, housed in London’s Burlington House and coordinated by sculptor and RA Member Richard Wilson, displays some 1,240 works by emerging and established contemporary artists.

The Royal Academy presents a number of significant prizes for outstanding works within the show including the prestigious £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award, one of the most significant art prizes in the UK, presented for the ‘most distinguished work’ in the exhibition, this year awarded to Nash for his sculpture, Big Black.

Big Black, a carved and charred redwood sculpture, stands at nearly four-metres-high and is an imposing presence in the Academy’s 10-room exhibition. It was completed in 2015 and previously shown at Periodic Tales.

David Nash, who currently is exhibiting in Paris, settled in Blaenau in the 1960s and has built up an international reputation as a sculptor in a career now spanning over 40 years.

See the full story in this week’s Meirionnydd edition of the Cambrian News