The Rewilding Series

This series of works consist mainly of graphite and charcoal drawings taken from walks into small patches of dense woodland in Britain – one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. Inspired by notions of the ‘Wald’ - so prominent in Germanic Art and Philosophy, a heritage that I have inherited from my mother; I became interested in petrified forests, both literal and metaphorical ones. Also, by the frottage works of Max Ernst, in which I was to create my own set of ‘natural histories’.

Using a projection of my photographs and in some cases a faint digital print of a previous drawing - I merged a representational style with the minute recording of the contours of the paper itself. This was done by additionally shining a shallow light onto the paper to highlight its surface. I then inhabited every millimeter of the drawings with life forms and spirits, taken from the undulations of the paper.

After a period of investigations into Land Art and British folklore, Geomancer is a glorified vision of a typical southern English landscape where straight line markings appear in various perspectives. The landscape has been mirrored twice to heighten this sense.

It has been partly taken from Leyman, 2013, and depicts of a viewpoint in Dorset. This in turn was heavily influenced by Alfred Watkins’ explorations into ley lines in his book ‘The Old Straight Track’, 1925. Watkins had noticed and sought to prove that "mounds, moats, beacons and markstones fall into strait tracks, i.e. sighted lines, throughout Britain, with fragmentary evidence of trackways on the alignments."

Far from being conclusive, the idea that wayfarers in a post ice-age Britain denuded of trees and before roads existed; would use prominent features in the landscape to guide a series of straight routes, and adding further features to these way markings, remains for me a tantalising theory. A big influence on future new-age mystics, Watkins did not veer into the claims that such tracks emerged out of preexisting ‘energy’ lines. It is far more likely that such meanings and imaginings would attach themselves to these ways later in time.

Geomancer, does not proclaim that such ‘magic’ actually exists. Rather, that it points towards the profound nature of a straight line through a landscape, both in a practical sense as well as a conceptual one.

Human beings are pattern-seeking animals who are constantly search for recognizable visual images within structures, often placing religious like meanings to the practical and the unknown. Another such phenomenon is called Pareidolia, in which figures seem to appear in the clouds and faces in the trunks trees.

The urge for us to seek patterns within the palimpsest of land, and its patchwork of historical sites on our landscape is enevitable. These notions have led to great works of art such as those of Richard Long, Iain Sinclair and perhaps most famously memorialized in the desert markings at Nazca, Peru.

Tower #1, 2023
14 x 9cm
Gouche, Ink & graphite on paper

Tower #2, 2023
14 x 9cm
Gouche, Ink & graphite on paper

Tower #4, 2022
14 x 9cm
Ink & graphite on paper

Tower #3, 2022
14 x 9cm
Gouche, Ink & graphite on paper

Tower #5, 2023
14 x 9cm
Gouche, Ink & graphite on paper

Tower #6, 2022
14 x 9cm
Gouche, Ink & graphite on paper

Tower #7, 2023
14 x 9cm
Gouche, Ink & graphite on paper

I recently had the pleasure to be commissioned by a friend of mine who runs his own IT company. He wanted to have a work to hang above his desk that would calm him down a remind him of the career goal that he has set himself.

The image contains details that he wished to be included, both related to his work and certain views of landscapes in his life. We settled around the idea of a river traversing through two cycles of chaos & order - finally dissipating into the cosmic ether of calm.

It was fascinating to hear about his work processes and to develop the piece with him over a number of meetings, towards the creation a work that would de-stress him and remind him of his career goal.

Forests are wonderful places yet only tiny pockets of them exist here in England. I often think of Britain, 7000 years ago when it was almost completely covered with trees & the vast hercynian forest that covered all of central Europe that the Romans recorded as taking more than 60 days to traverse! Only scattered traces of this remain with its most famous remnant being the Schwarzwald (Black Forest), where my mother was born.

In this work, nature is marginalised and petrified within the fenced off sections of the frame. The central triangle is made from a rubbing from an OSB board. It creates a straight track through this potential wilderness and points to the destiny that befalls most trees.

Holzweg means a path through a wood in German, but it has a double meaning as in taking the wrong path - the irony of drawing a forest with pencils and framing it in wood. At least it is slow frugal art.