Wales has a rich history of myth and legend. A land of dragons, goddesses and poetry, many of us grew up with stories of dreams and magic passed down through generations. We are accustomed to associating Welsh mythology with the expanse of green fields, snow-topped mountains and rivers of the countryside. But what if there is magic to be uncovered in the more urban landscapes of Wales too?

Peredur, Son of Efrawg: The Magical Stag

The Mabinogion, a collection of the earliest Welsh prose stories from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries, is one of the most familiar representations of myth in Wales. Its stories are magical, dream-like, dark and full of twists and turns. An integral part of Welsh culture, the Mabinogion has been the inspiration for a breadth of art and literature.

Corrie Chiswell has painted a series of works that focus on the characters and stories of the Mabinogion, with the Welsh countryside and mountains as the backdrop. Chiswell's The Dream of Rhonabwy: The Many Coloured Horses is a surreal piece that represents the events of Rhonabwy's dream in which he has a vision and visits the time of King Arthur.

The Dream of Rhonabwy: The Many Coloured Horses

Elements of the story are captured in Chiswell's painting: the men's horses look down at a chess board, half-concealed by the 'magic carpet' of the forest floor. The ravens, which murder Arthur's servants, are shown perched on branches, illuminated in soft blue light that enhances their magical presence and mythical powers.

Myth and magic are often connected to the natural world. It's through this that we can begin to consider how Wales's more urban, post-industrial or populated areas hold these qualities too. I've grown up (and still live) in Barry, a docks town that was industrialised to be a coal port to relieve the Tiger Bay docks in Cardiff. In the early 1900s, Barry Docks was the largest coal exporter in the world. Although still active, with the post-1980s decline of the coal industry under Margaret Thatcher's deindustrialisation policies, activity at the docks has slowed.

In Eric James Malthouse's Pit Props, Barry Docks, we see the meeting of two worlds. In the foreground of the oil painting, lush grass and flowers shimmer in the low sun. A pile of logs blur into the grass, suggesting that nature is taking back what was extracted from it.

Behind, the natural world is contrasted with the industrial. Dark factories loom in the background, a plume of smoke suggests that they are still active, while cranes reach to the peach of the sunset sky.

Produced by Malthouse towards the end of his life, when he moved to Barry and began painting works that captured the scenes of the town, the painting shows us that the natural world brings magic, even to the most urban of spaces. When industrial spaces have declined and closed, nature will grow back.

Cardiff-born Bert Isaac's semi-abstract works explore where industrial meets landscape. In Mining Area, we see the renewal of nature in an abandoned mining area, perhaps an old coal tip.

The entrance to the tip blurs into the hills of the landscape. Deserted industrial materials are given to the trees and flora that continue to bloom, sprouting from the roofs of old buildings and covering paths. There is magic in the way that nature reclaims, bringing with it a flurry of wildlife. As a result, we enter a new world, where the natural and post-industrial find ways to co-exist and merge as one.

I live in Cadoxton, the oldest part of Barry, where St Cadoc's Church was once the central feature. I grew up hearing stories of the witch of Cadoxton, residing in a cottage near the church, who could shapeshift into a hare. It's said her wizard son is buried in the church's graveyard to this day. In Gwyn Davies' painting Cadoxton Church, that same church is presented in a blur of deep greens, blues and yellows.

The church's structure is clear in some parts, but in others it blends into the sky and fields of the background – it's unclear where the natural world ends, and the church begins. This may also suggests a blending between the supernatural and human worlds, on the borders between life and death.

Cherry Pickles' The Most Bleeding Yew, depicts a yew tree that can be found in a churchyard in Nevern, Pembrokeshire. The tree's sap has a rusty red colour, which oozes from a wound-like opening on its trunk. In the painting, this 'blood' gently contrasts against the otherwise majority cool tones used, showing the sap dripping to the base of the trunk.

In the village of Nevern, the 700-year-old yew has taken on a mythological status, with local legends associating it with the Tree of Life, or the tree's blood representing tears it cries for innocent deaths.

In Celtic mythology, rabbits and hares are associated with the moon and thought to have the ability to communicate with the Otherworld when they burrow underground. In Tony Steele-Morgan's Newport, a framed image shows us a rabbit in a meadow or forest, the sky lit by a full moon.

Outside of the frame, a trio of butterflies leads to the backdrop of urban Newport, where factory chimneys spout smoke that clouds the blue sky.

The frame of the rabbit's image acts as a portal. It could represent what the scene would have looked like pre-industrialisation, or it could represent the ways in which two worlds – the natural and mythological, and the populated and urban – can co-exist. What if at night, when the factories are closed and the people are in their homes, the wild takes its signal to come to life?

The sea offers up many features we have come to associate with myth and magic. In Anna Todd's Dreams of the Sea, set at a coastal area where civilisation meets the sea, we see these items represented. A message in a glass bottle, a fossil, pearls and shells are illuminated in a bright light.

These items have been used in folktales to signify mystery, representing the stories of the past, as well as being gifts from the ocean. In the background of the painting, we see a lighthouse on the edge of a cliff and the twinkle of lights from homes.

The painting can now be found at the University Hospital of Wales, in Cardiff – an example of how art can introduce myth and magic into urban clinical spaces.

I've collated these works as each of them invites us to consider Wales as a home for myth and magic beyond the conventional expanses. Through the presence of nature, myth lives on in urban and suburban spaces. In the meeting of the natural, supernatural and industrial worlds, there is magic to be found in our towns, cities and villages, too.

Taylor Edmonds, poet, writer and creative facilitator

This content was supported by Welsh Government funding