91Èȱ¬

Having heard people describe Ifor Davies as the Grand Old Man of Welsh art, I thought I'd met the wrong Ifor Davies when I was introduced to him at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.

We were due to film him the following morning for the fourth film in our series but, far from looking like he ought to have been preserved in one of the museum's glass cases, alongside a Bronze Age hunter or a Victorian milkman, he was probably the snappiest dresser in a room swimming with well-heeled Welsh crachach.

He wore a long jacket you couldn't buy, even in Wales's finest gentlemen's outfitters. It was styled half-way between Darth Vader's cloak and the hand-stitched, velvet creations sported by the flashiest, best-paid Teds in the Aberdare of my youth. This was someone who reminded me that artists are supposed to look different. They are supposed to have style and verve. Ifor has it in shovelfuls: no-less than you'd expect from an artist who has worked and exhibited around the world since the 1960s.

Ifor has a large studio in a converted grain-store in Penarth. Travel due north on the A470 and you come to another conversion serving as an artist's studio, this time a cavernous former chapel in Blaenau Ffestiniog. It houses the sought-after wooden sculptures of David Nash. So sought-after, in fact, that we arrived to film him shortly after crates of them had just been shipped-off to art dealers in Germany. Many of the rest, he explained, were being exhibited at Britain's premier sculpture show, the Yorkshire Sculpture Park near Wakefield.

North of Bridgend, our film crew invaded a studio in another remarkable chapel conversion, nestling in a former mining valley that now resembles a glorious wooded Alpine glen. Here we filmed Kevin Sinnott, born down the road in Sarn, painting his huge, life-affirming canvases and giving us his personal variation on a theme common to the lives of so many artists connected with Wales since the Second World War.

It runs along these lines: talented youngster leaves Wales to study at prestigious London art school, often the Royal College. Talented graduate becomes famous and sought-after artist. Successful artist gets passionate yen to return to Wales, often after becoming parents or after suffering the roller-coaster tendencies of the London art market. Money is scraped together sufficient to convert abandoned churches, schools, farmhouses, barns and warehouses. Drawing, painting and sculpture resume within them.

Crumbling buildings are rescued. New beauty and intellectual vibrancy emerge from them. Wales has its soul enriched.

The final episode of Framing Wales can be seen on Thursday 17 March at 7.30pm on 91Èȱ¬ Two Wales, or afterwards on 91Èȱ¬ iPlayer.