Beyond the Tree

Kilburn Horse block drawing.

Shortly after the end of the Northern Stones and Peat Smoke exhibition in Liverpool I was invited to have a solo exhibition at the ‘Inspired By’ gallery in the North York Moors National Park.

The theme of the exhibition and programmed events focused on the environmental importance of trees and their function as habitat and host for flora and fauna.

I had used tree images in my landscape prints in the past and was interested in how, in moorland landscape they often signified sites of abandoned habitation. Farmsteads would plant trees for shelter and shade and when the buildings are finally abandoned and left to ruin, all that marks the existence is the tree and a pile of stones.

I wanted to look at how trees were particular to the North York Moors landscape and returned to an area on the coast where I had worked previously. I was attracted to the combination of wind sculpted and manicured hedges along the coastal path and the north sea shoreline.

I also spent some time walking over Glaisdale Moor above Eskdale and around ‘The Hole of Horcum’ both of which are littered with bronze age earthworks and tumuli. The final print in the series is a view across woodland around Hambleton with the Kilburn White Horse on the hillside.

The drawings were made through winter so the structure of the tree forms were exposed and contained the previous season’s berries and old leaves, with evidence of new growth starting to appear in February.

I have made the prints in a panorama landscape orientation to emulate the vastness of what is the England’s largest national park.

The exhibition is due open at the ‘Inspired By’ Gallery at the Danby North York Moors National Park Centre in July but this is now obviously doubtful and could be postponed. On a brighter note, because of the lockdown I seem to have produced the required work in half the time it normally takes!