Landscape artist Anthony Garratt has completed work on High and Low, a spectacular outdoor painting installation which he has created in Snowdonia, North Wales.  The installation evoques a unique and compelling narrative about the history, geography and industrial heritage of North Wales. It features two giant canvases, both of which were painted by the artist in situ. 

The first canvas floats on a specially constructed vessel, high on a lake next to an abandoned copper mine on the flanks of Snowdon. It is a double sided canvas and reveals itself to the viewer according to the direction of the prevailing wind.

A second canvas hangs deep beneath the North Wales mountains in a disused slate cavern at Llechwedd, near Blaenau Ffestiniog. It hangs in an underground chamber where men and boys as young as eight years old once toiled for 12 hours a day, six days a week, in semi-darkness.

The Welsh slate industry - which hit its production peak in the late 19th century - indelibly changed the landscape of North Wales and shaped the nature of its communities for generations. The installation has been brought to Snowdonia by Bun Matthews,  a local businesswoman who is passionate about landscape painting.  She hopes the installation will encourage visitors to make a deeper connection with the region's dramatic landscape and the forces that have shaped it.

The installation tips a nod to landscape painters like Richard Wilson and Turner, whose dramatic landscape canvases encouraged some of the first tourists to North Wales in the 19th century. The footfall for the duration of the installation is likely to be hundreds of thousands - more viewers than most major London galleries.

Each of the two locations offers a unique and arresting opportunity for highly visual storytelling and contemplation: from the soaring light and reflected imagery of the mountain lake to the dark atmospheric shadows and acoustics of the abandoned slate cavern.

Because the paintings have been created in situ and are seen in context, they will offer a very different way for the viewer to engage with both the art and the landscape which inspired it. 

The paintings have been created using water-based paint as well as sympathetic and naturally occurring local materials like slate dust and copper.