This piece continues the ongoing series exploring the lives during the industrial revolution and the faces of South Wales miners. Individuals whose work shaped the industrial world and whose communities bore the weight and rhythm of life underground.

This one, carved and printed on a small scale, still carries that weight. Just 100mm square.

The Print

Like the first print in the series, this isn’t about heroic figures. The figure carries the weight of his environment, shaped by the structures that surround him. He’s both product and participant in this landscape of coal and faith and community.

The mines are closed now, many of the chapels stand empty, but the houses remain occupied. The physical infrastructure of this way of life persists even as the economic and social structures that created it have shifted.

The Series

Each print in this series stands alone but contributes to a wider picture: a tribute to the workers who laboured in the mines and factories of the valleys.

They’re the faces that made up the workers who built their lives around the rhythms of pits and factories.

These aren’t historical figures with names and dates. They’re composites drawn from history books, memories, and imagination.

Hwyl fawr/Goodbye,
Dan