Exploring the ancient oaks of Sherwood Forest
The inquiry into Sherwood Forest first stemmed from a place of healing, a need to be closer to nature and be porous to the earth. Many hours spent within the calmness of the forest soon germinated into a fascination with the lives of trees, as I began to build relationships with the tree community there who expertly study, care and tend for this special place.
Steeped in history and legend, Sherwood is a remnant of the old ways in which humans co - habited with nature. Over time this relationship with the forest has led to a dense population of Ancient Oak, and today supports a wide variety of biodiversity and a rich habitat for nature. The English Oak is emblematic of our heritage. Many of our ancient and veteran trees share a deep rooted connection with human history, in some cases our oldest trees can only be dated through historical records, the traditional means of ring barking being lost to wood decay as a tree ages.
The historical context of the work explores beyond landscape as setting for human narrative to take place. Drawing reference from The German and British Romantic period of nature as sublime, by placing the tree as landscape in its own right. Trees bearing evidence of growth and decay, nod subtly to the ruination and wildness of Friedrich's Abbey in the Oakwood, where others pay warm homage to Constables detailed admiration for trees in the English Landscape.
When painting, I am concerned with capturing the essence of an experience. The thing that is difficult to speak of but powerful to experience. Working in an abstract way, I let the hand orchestrate the rhythm of a work, deploying paint sculpturally and sensuously whilst capturing the form in a simple and elegant way. When out in the Forest, I often begin with a scouting mission. Foraging for ideas, recording the passage of light, the mood imbued within weather, the colours of season, the sounds, textures and feel of nature and environment.
With a sketchbook in hand I take note of the tree's architecture, how its weight sits, where its form flows and jilts in direction, its textures of bark, from smooth silver growth to broken shards splitting and crumpling like strata. I look for burrs, epicormic shoots, brown rot, corpse-like coatings of lichens, moist mosses and fruiting fungi. Only through observation will I truly understand what I am looking at.
Through all the subjects that inspire me, there is a deep sense of time rooted within them. Natural worlds that annihilate the human instant, give way to the sense that we are a very small part of a much older world, and an older world yet to come. Just like the stratification of rock, or the blue memory of a glacier, a tree too wears the passage of time. Etched into their surface is a diary of existence, simultaneously living and dead, a tree's form flows through growth and decay, bearing the fleeting history of hundreds of human lives within the single lifetime of its own.
Trees are the longest living examples of a complex natural world. From the symbiotic mutualism trees share with fungi, to providing habitats for many specialist fauna to thrive. Hidden in their heartwood, or hibernating in hollows, perched on high branches or dwelling deep in root and earth, a tree is a living
landscape in its own right. Surely, in this decisive decade we are facing, planting more native trees, future proofing habitats through veteranisation and managing land with regenerative and sustainable practices in mind, can only be beneficial for every living thing on earth. Surely then, my role here as a painter of nature is to give a voice to that which is worth conserving, by connecting us to the landscape on a psychological level. To conjure recollection in us all, of places that have moved us, taking us inwards, to feelings for the world and ourselves.
