David Dawson

And at the time, there wasn't a high school.

And mum and dad didn't want to send us to the mainland to boarding school because what really happened was the kids never really came back to the island.

Right.

So, mum being Welsh, they found another farm in Mid Wales.

So from the age of nine to 22, that's my formative years spent on this very remote hill farm.

And were you always making art or drawing at that time?

I was good at drawing at school.

I was working with my dad on the farm.

I left school at 16.

I'm a good shepherd.

Yeah, I worked on the farm with my dad, but always wanting to go out into the world for myself.

For me, it was a struggle that

I felt a certain pressure that I should follow what my father wished or what my father did before me.

And that for me was somehow wrong.

I had to find myself my own place in the world.

And I thought the best way to sort of not only grow and educate yourself was through art.

And my dad, being an educated man, was sort of encouraging of me.

But he did make me choose one or the other.

He said, you can't do both, which is a perceptive answer.

I chose art.