Oriel Canfas Gallery continues its dynamic programme with two exhibitions by painters Sarah Lees and Patricia McParlin, both members of the Royal Cambrian Academy.

Founded in 1881 and constituted by Queen Victoria in 1882, the academy is an independent charity supporting Welsh art and artists, with just over 100 artist members today.

Sarah Lees’ work explores the rural thresholds of West Wales — places where cultivated fields give way to wild thickets, where ancient stones rise from the earth, and where human traces fade into the rhythms of nature.

Her process — layering delicate oils, scratching back surfaces, and revisiting known sites — transforms observation into touch, light into texture.

Patricia McParlin’s latest body of work is concerned with the liminal spaces between the seasons: the subtle shifts that signal change.

A strong, almost architectural structure provides the framework for each composition.

Against this sense of order, intuitive, gestural marks, line, texture and text are used to disrupt and shift the underlying structure.

She draws deeply on earlier work as a musician, writer and theatre practitioner, and her mixed-media paintings are often described as symphonic: music for the eyes, where harmonious colour and sweeping, operatic brushstrokes evoke rhythm, atmosphere and emotional depth.

“I partly see my art as a form of visual poetic, or static music,” she said.

“The impulse to transform, to harmonise discords, walking in between beauty and brutality, the bitter sweet.”

The exhibition opens on 31 October and runs until 28 November.

A drinks reception on 31 October (1pm-3pm) offers the opportunity to meet the artists.

The gallery is open Tuesday to Saturday, 10.30am-4pm.

Canfas in Cardigan, sponsor of the 2026 Eisteddfod Gold Medal for Fine Art, has established itself as one of the leading galleries in Wales.

The gallery collaborates with others to showcase established and emerging Welsh artists, alongside exemplary work from other nations.