‘LISTEN: I have found the home of my heart. I could not eat: I could not think straight any more; so I came to this solitary place and lay in the sun.’ – Brenda Chamberlain, Tide-Race
Recently, I came across this book by artist Brenda Chamberlain in a charity shop. I knew nothing about her before reading it, but I have become fascinated by her life on Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island), and Ydra (Hydra) in Greece. A Rope of Vines is illustrated with the artist’s line drawings described by artist Shani Rhys James in the introduction: “Only the simple form remains, described with a line, as though light is reflected onto the surfaces, bleaching out all detail.”
It’s a much shorter book than Tide-Race, the memoir she wrote about the years she spent living on Bardsey Island, and describes the landscape and people in the remoter places beyond the harbour, in intense detail, as well as her rich internal world.
Chamberlain also wrote a memoir of the years she spent living on Bardsey Island from 1947 until 1962: Tide Race. Ynys Enlli, or ‘Island of the Currents’, sits alone in the Irish Sea off the tip of the Llyn peninsula in Gwynedd. The crossing was frequently rough and dangerous, and it was not unusual for islanders to be cut off from the mainland for days. Brenda lived frugally there, often low on food, and if she ran out of canvases she would paint on newspaper and hardboard in the kitchen, and walls upstairs. These drawings have been restored and protected and can be seen by visitors to the island today.
She spent frequent time off of the island, but to her the isolation was imperative for her development as an artist. After a trip to France, she writes: ‘I came back to my prison on the sea rock, everything put from me but the ambition to succeed as an artist. It is only in voluntary imprisonment that I can bring out the painful fruits of experience.’
John Brannigan1 describes Tide-Race as, ‘a psychological journey and a mystical quest’. In it, the seals call to Chamberlain, taking her “down to my deepest roots nurtured on legend and fantasy.” She imagines herself married to a man who leaves her for long periods, and who she finally sees as a seal singing in a human voice. In her dreams, she often shape shifts from woman to seal : “There is often so strong a link between woman and seal that it would seem almost normal for them to cohabit”.
In the article, The Haunted Island: Medieval History and the Old English Elegies in Brenda
Chamberlain’s Tide-race (1962), Francesca Brooks examines Chamberlain’s rejection of dominant, medieval patriarchal histories of Enlli and how she refused to read the island as a male monastic site, or as a Welsh nationalist or cultural space. “Chamberlain freed herself of the obligation to exhaustively include Enlli’s medieval history and emphasized her own unique vision of the island: this vision is more subjective and a hybrid of fact and fiction, experience and imagination.” Chamberlain “draws on the vibrancy of medieval culture to invent new forms for the crises of the present.”
The article also reads Tide-race as an elegy and lament for a series of ruptures and losses that the war had cost Chamberlain personally, whether directly or indirectly, and as an attempt to reckon with communal post-war grief.
“The ideologies inscribed onto Enlli before Chamberlain’s arrival were largely spiritual and patriarchal. However, it is worth noting that from the mid-twentieth century to the present, Enlli’s most famous residents have been women: the Eisteddfod winner and schoolteacher Dilys Cadwaladr (1902–1979), Brenda Chamberlain, Sister Helen Mary who lived the solitary life on the island from 1969 to 1992, the poet Christine Evans (1943–), and the novelist Fflur Dafydd (1978–).”2
The painting below is of one of Chamberlain’s island neighbours holding the artist’s cat.
Brenda Chamberlain (1912–1971)
National Museum Cardiff
Here is a link to a short film made of Brenda Chamberlain on Ynys Enlli: https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-island-artist-1953-online
“Life on this, as on every small island, is controlled by the moods of the sea; its tides, its gifts, its deprivations.” – from Tide-Race.
- Brannigan, J (2014) Archipelagic Modernism: Literature in the Irish and British Isles, 1890–1970, 224. ↩︎
- Brooks, F (2023) The Haunted Island: Medieval History and the Old English Elegies in Brenda Chamberlain’s Tide-race (1962) The Review of English Studies, Volume 74, Issue 317, November 2023, Pages 860–880, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgad092 ↩︎
Sarah J Featherstone 
She sounds like an interesting person who died fairly young by today’s standards. You’ve inspired me to get a book and biography on Amazon.
She certainly does. I’m so inspired by her fearlessness and her work, both writing and painting. The Jill Piercy biography seems good so far (I’ve just started it). I hope you enjoy them.
They do, occasionally come, with eyes that are not blinkered by the Earth nor blinded by the Sun.
And to come across them as I have just come across Brenda is like discovering gold.
What a fortuitous find in a charity shop! I really enjoyed your blog post and learning about this inspiring woman. I certainly feel tempted to find out more about her and read some books by and about her.
Thanks Sarah!
Thanks Karen. I’m glad you enjoyed learning about Brenda. I recommend the Jill Piercy biography – I’m half way through, and it’s a great compliment to the memoirs.
what a gorgeous story Sarah. Like Karen I’m left wanting to know more too!
Thanks Jenny. I’m hoping to visit Bardsey Island soon, and looking forward to seeing Brenda’s drawings in the house she lived in there.