Latte and an Art Exhibition - 5 October 2025

I returned to Aberystwyth recently and was able to go back to the cafe I wrote about here.

As usual I suddenly remembered that I could write a post about it by which time I’d already wolfed down the small brownie. Anyway the decaff latte with oat milk I had was very nice too. It even had a bit of latte art.

_{Empty plate after eating the brownie too quickly.}

It was a little bit overcast at the time but the view from the side window was still great in my opinion and I could even see the sea in the distance.

On a wall in the cafe area (it's all open space) there was an exhibition of paintings by an artist called Valerie Leblond. She’s originally from Quebec, Canada, but has been living in Wales for a long time. A card on the wall read that she’s influenced by :

folk and primitive art, her paintings and illustrations often deal with the idea of belonging.

You can see the photo I took below:

_{In my humble opinion this needed much more detail about her work and inspiration.}

All her work on display was really detailed and interesting. Below you can see one of her paintings on display and for sale:

_{I liked the falling leaves and the red brownish colour of the painting above.}

I enjoyed seeing the simplicity of the design in Leblond’s work. I also liked the humour in the title ‘Hwyr’, ‘Late’, as the main character is riding a hen. Alas I could not afford this painting as it was £850 or around 8 thousand Steem. Sometimes exhibitions also offer postcards but this was sadly not the case so all I had was the photo.

_{The red dot indicates that the painting above called Jemima had been sold.}

Above you can see another painting which reminds me a bit of Puritan characters although as you can see the colour red is quite prominent. I’ll have to see if there’s any more information about the meaning of this painting; for instance I’m curious whether that ship is leaving or returning. I’d also like to find out why the women are showing a quilt like a flag, and why they are also shown carrying gardening tools. I also wonder why two of them are facing the wrong way or vice versa. I think it’s an interesting painting that poses a lot of questions.

For these paintings the artist didn’t use fabric canvas but what appeared to be pieces of wood that were not totally straight hence some of the ‘distortion’ you can see on both paintings.

Thank you for reading !