Recently, I started reading a new book that had been on my wishlist for quite some time. Ben Rawlence’s The Treeline is a beautifully narrated journey across the high latitudes of the world, examining the changing environment where trees give way to the Arctic Tundra. It’s less about climate change and more about the intricacies of the natural world and its relationship to the people that live in these desolate lands.
Needless to say, every time I read a new book or venture somewhere new, my painting takes a new path, And it was no different this time, as I’m working on a mini collection - both in terms of the number of pieces and the scale of them - inspired by this unique environment, and how trees are far more dynamic and diverse than most of us realise.
Years ago I used to get deeply engrossed in a theme or idea about how I could expand on it, trying to do bigger and better paintings. But since my Scotland trip a year ago, and my switch to landscape art, I’ve created three landscape collections and am working on a fourth. Why? Because I’ve allowed myself to run with an idea only as long as it wishes. I’m not forcing out ideas or re-working concepts: once the theme has naturally run its course, I move on.
Looking back through the three collections I’ve painted over the last year, I see just how easily one painting flows into another. The final painting of one collection can just as easily be the start of the second collection. Yet each collection of landscapes has its own personality, mood, its own colour palette.
In my first collection painted during and after my solo trip to the Scottish highlands in early 2023, I wanted to capture those feelings of awe, wonder and mystery that the highlands evoke. The landscape that is as luminous as it is legendary. I painted many (many) views of Glencoe, Loch Ness, Loch Awe, Ben Nevis and the many mórs (mountains) that can feel equally majestic, lonely, beautiful and terrifying all in the same instant. I wanted to capture the muted colours of the end of winter, and the slow creep of the seasons.
I’m not sure exactly which Scotland painting marked the end of Heather & Highlands, but my desire to explore more of the UK’s landscapes was far from over. This time, I moved closer to home (coinciding with several trips back to England and my home town) and decided to paint some of the landscapes of my childhood.
Woodlands and Walks is part memento, part rediscovery. The more I painted the more I remembered of my favourite tree-lit walks in the Cotswold's, or climbing down a terrifyingly windy set of stairs to a lighthouse in Holyhead, Wales to look for its elusive, sardine-stuffed puffins. There is so much to explore in the UK's woodlands, parks, moors, forests, rivers and coasts. Through painting these vistas, I hope to capture some of their magic.
Then as a new year dawned and with it a new job, new responsibilities and another trip home, I closed another painting chapter. I wanted to explore more human elements in the landscape, inspired by Caspar David Fredreich and the use of the repoussoir - having a person or subject in the fore of the painting to draw the viewer's gaze to the subject. I’ve always tried to include more of a personal touch to my work, without being explicit or cliché. Now as a mum, it's happened rather naturally. The Wonderlands collection grew as a series exploring my relationship to myself, my childhood and my son’s own childhood as he grows. Each painting is fundamentally a landscape painting, most often with a figure or several figures looking away from the viewer and into the painting. My hope is that you'll walk into the paintings with them, to feel the scenes in the same way they do.
The Wonderlands series is definitely not complete, but just as a downy birch tree can quickly override a pine forest if given the right conditions, reading The Treeline has put a pause on it, as I explore my inner dendrophile (that’s lover of forest and trees) and paint a subject that I’ve struggled with in the past. How diverse are leaves and branches, really? I’m about to find out…