There was an excellent and well-attended talk by Professor Tony Curtis on the artist Ray Howard-Jones at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery on Friday.

The talk, entitled An Eye for Pembrokeshire, was given in conjunction with the retrospective show of Ray's work being shown at the museum which was co-curated by Professor Curtis with collections manager Mark Lewis.

The talk was a fully illustrated tour through Ray's adventurous life and included images of her paintings, rare photographs and letters, as well as audio recordings of Ray reading her poetry and extracts from a film. Tony spoke about her early life, including training at the Slade and working at the National Museum of Wales and her work as one of only a handful of accredited female war artists during World War Two.

Ray was most closely associated with Skomer Island and the talk covered her time spent living here with photographer Ray Moore. Skomer held challenges and was always an adventure and indeed her whole life was packed with drama and event and incident. She possessed great energy even in her later years and the film clip and photographs showed her wandering around the cliffs of Skomer and working at Rath Cottage in Marloes.

Tony informed the audience that the poet-painter David Jones had been a great supporter of Ray's work and that he had found a kindred spirit in Ray. Ray wrote poetry as well as painted and felt that she was as good a writer as she was a painter. She painted all her life - she always claimed that she painted her first picture whilst seated in the window of the Royal Gatehouse Hotel in Tenby when she was eight years of age - and even her letters were often decorated with illustration.

Tony gave thanks to Tenby Museum for showing the works and gave special thanks to John Ross who had offered invaluable assistance in setting up the Powerpoint display. At the end of the evening the audience had the opportunity to view the paintings on display in the gallery.

The exhibition, Ray Howard-Jones 1903-1996 A Retrospective, is on display at Tenby Museum and Art Gallery until October 20.