Liz Rowland: The Cockle Women of South Wales

There’s a briskness to the air along the South Wales coast - sharp with salt, alive with stories carried in on the wind. At low tide, you can imagine the quiet clatter of baskets and the steady presence of women bent to their work, gathering cockles from the sand. It’s within this windswept, rhythmic landscape that artist Liz Rowland found inspiration for her latest series.

Cockle Woman No. 2, Liz Rowland, 2025.

Her newest paintings, The Cockle Women of South Wales, created for The Shop Floor Project, is a tribute to a traditional way of life and the quiet power and permanence of the women who lived it. Part of a broader collection entitled Rural Life, these paintings anchor the viewer in a place among sand, seaweed, and rusted buckets. You can almost hear the soft bray of donkeys, feel the cold bite of wind under a scarf, and smell the brine of the low tide...

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Image Credits:

Lead Image: Cockle Woman No.1, Liz Rowland, 2025.

All other images as credited in image captions.