Each Sunday, local antique dealer, Alistair Dryburgh of West Wales Antiques runs a (nearly always) weekly fair over on his Instagram feed. A couple of weeks ago, he had up for sale a trio of HUGE paintings by Mark Rickard.

They’d originally been commissioned in 1976 for a local club in Aberystwyth and represent Welsh rural life.

I instantly fell in love and proceeded to Google him to see if I could find any other artworks that he’d done. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a single artwork or any information about the artist himself… absolutely nothing at all!

His style reminds me of Joseph Herman and Stanley Spencer, especially the latter’s Clyde shipbuilding series.

I’ve messaged Alistair in the past few minutes and he’s said that the top two paintings – the tug-of-war and the sheep and cows – are still available, if you’re interested.

Tragically, we don’t have a wall big enough in our old cottage to hang one – not to mention multiple – paintings of this size… otherwise I’d have to own them.

If anyone out there can shed any light on Mark Rickard we’d love to learn more about him. An artist this talented must have produced more masterpieces… and hopefully smaller examples that could fit on our walls!