Ros Dodd

As a child, Ros loved creating things out of ‘nothing much’, inspired no doubt by Blue Peter! She would knit squares out of her mother’s wool leftovers and sew them together to make blankets for her dolls. At the age of ten, she set up a stall on the pavement outside her house to raise money for the RSPCA, selling painted stones and matchboxes decorated with seashells she’d picked up during family holidays in Wales.

Most of Ros’s adult life has been focused on writing rather than visual art: she trained as a journalist and for many years worked on newspapers as a reporter and, later, as a feature writer.

In 2021, Ros finally made the move to Wales, leaving Birmingham to settle just outside Tywyn. And it was here that her youthful love of making art returned (as did her writing mojo, which for a while had deserted her). She started turning her Welsh landscape photographs into canvas art, took up knitting again and re-ignited her passion for making ‘something out of nothing’. Having bought lots of driftwood artwork over the years, Ros started collecting washed-up pieces and turning them into wall hangings and baubles.

And this is what inspires her most: the creation of objects d’art from discarded, worn-out sticks and blocks of wood found marooned on the tideline. She enjoys the entire process – walking on the (usually deserted) beach near where she lives, with just waves and oystercatchers for company, and searching for the right shapes, sizes and textures of driftwood. Then back home to dry the haul in front of the fire before setting to work to give them a new lease of life as a wall hanging or bauble. Her mother’s old sewing box is still offering up gifts – this time in the form of old buttons, which Ros adds to some of the hangings, along with painted beach pebbles.

Her blog, about her village and the people who live there, can be found at https://bryncrug-biwgl.blogspot.com

Contact Ros