Insole Court is a Victorian Gothic Revival mansion house and garden in Cardiff. The Insoles were pioneering coal-shippers, mine-owners and railwaymen during the Welsh Steam Coal’s dominance of world industry.
In 2019 our exhibiting group, Roath Botanic Garden Artists, put on an exhibition of our work there. The group's general aim is to illustrate and celebrate the plant life of Cardiff parks, gardens and natural environments with each of our six artists working in very different styles and media.
The house and gardens are in the process of being renovated, but many of the rooms have been completed and it is well worth a visit. Much of the decor is in the Gothic Revival style used by William Burges in Castell Coch and Cardiff Castle with detailed flora and fauna decorating many of the walls and ceilings.
In a departure from my usual medium of watercolour, for this exhibition I used fallen leaves from some of the Japanese Maples in the Insole Court grounds and other plant material to produce a series of monoprints, which I then combined with greyscale prints of one of my pencil drawings of the garden's stone steps from many years ago. Unfortunately the lovely old Magnolia trees that used to flank the steps are no longer there, although there are some amazing trees in the grounds. This sequence of collages was inspired by three elements - the garden's architecture, the lovely collection of Maple trees, and an exquisite stained glass window on the landing of the main house.