Did you notice there are 3 Welsh painters represented in my list?- yet hardly known as a Welsh speciality. There was a great exhibition of Thomas Jones a year or 2 back at Cardiff; A Wall in Naples brought tears to my eyes, something that's never happened with a painting before. I was reeling. The most unpretentious little thing but on its own terms quite perfect. He was well ahead of his time, seems really modern, (in fact the first painting i saw by him i thought was from the 2nd half of the 20th century!) is now starting to get some recognition. I was surprised to find the picture on the back cover of an Italian selection of world paintings. Kyffin Williams has quietly become an old master of seascapes- his later stuff from the 1990's on is really accomplished, and it's time he was given proper recognition in England, but i suppose most British art critics and prizes are too stuck with bankrupt shock-shock concept art like Tracy Emin, as if Duchamp hadn't happened nearly 100 years ago. These critics love to imagine such work is challenging + revolutionary, but seems to me they're in a 60's art college rut, and made fools by their egos, showing off their depth of understanding and daring attitudes by giving all sorts of meanings to works that are actually very shallow. Their horror of figurative art (as if passe and reactionary) is like film critics despising Ozu or Jean Renoir as too old-fashioned.