Artist

Crystal, a feisty artist who specialises in nude paintings, decides to move to rural Wales from Manchester after a failed relationship. Going with her is her constant companion, a foul-mouthed parrot called Perkins, whose repertoire includes references to various body parts.The Artist covers a year of Crystal s new life and is split into seven self-contained stories. Crystal encounters the best and worst of life in the tight-knit community of Bala, in the picturesque foothills of Snowdonia. She meets David, a local farmer who comes wooing with gifts of fish, and Old Huw, a deceptively caring old gent who gives Crystal some very dodgy advice on the Welsh language, which turns her into a laughing stock when she tries to use it. She gets her own back by painting a picture of Huw in the nude, scaring a flock of local sheep with his huge appendage and persuades his local pub, The Glyndwr Arms, to hang the portrait behind the bar.In other stories, Bala suffers a power cut as the remnants of Hurricane Harry sweep in from the Atlantic, just as Crystal prepares for the Bala s Got Talent contest. She and David are favourites to win, despite Huw s rendition of a Harry Lauder classic in Welsh and the Dolly Parton lookalike s breasts deflating while she tells the story of A Coat of Many Colours. Along the way, David gets embroiled in a boxing match with a local cage fighter, and Crystal comes up against the Women of the Mountains, a nutty Presbyterian sect who object to her presence in God-fearing Wales...The Artist is a laugh-out-loud collection of tales that are perfect to relax with. It will particularly strike a chord with anyone who has had to get used to a completely unfamiliar place and its ways.