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This week's All Things Considered reflects on one of the most distinctive artists Wales has produced.

Nicholas Evans was in his late 60s before he began painting seriously - in his bedroom in Aberdare. The astonishing outpouring of skill and passion which followed was all the more remarkable because he had received no formal training. He had his first exhibition at 71 to widespread critical acclaim, and since then his work has been seen across the land. All of it reflecting his twin passions - coal mining and the Christian faith. His unique style of painting, using his fingers and rags in subdued blacks, whites and blues, portrays colliers in the claustrophobic conditions he'd known himself as a pit boy.

Nicholas Evans died in 2004 at the age of 96, and recently Roy Jenkins, along with art historian Professor John Harvey, went to the Swansea Valley to meet his two sons, Victor and Peter, themselves now in their seventies. At Peter's home on the hills above Ystradgynlais, they talked about their father with affection and humour as they looked back over his life and work.

This edition of All Things Considered will be broadcast on Sunday 6 February at 9am and repeated on Thursday 10 February at 5.30am.

This programme was first broadcast on 13 June 2010.

Entombed - Jesus in the Midst by Nicholas Evans. (c) Trustees of the Nicholas Evans Estate

Related links

Related books:

"Symphonies in Black" by Rhoda Evans.
ISBN-10: 0862431352
ISBN-13: 978-0862431358

"Image of the Invisible: Visualisation of Religion in the Welsh Nonconformist Tradition" by John Harvey. University of Wales Press.
ISBN-10: 0708314759
ISBN-13: 978-0708314753