Interview to the artist by Rachelle Gryn Brettler, from our Anniversary Book
It is the positive emotions of happiness or awe that spark my creative activity. My work often involves thinking about time - holding on to a moment of happiness, or a recognition of something complex and inspiring which I want to understand and share.
I like to think of my practice as a process of research rather than creativity, a quest to find some way of understanding and communicating something of the subject and my response. The constant question in my mind is What if I..?. I am happiest when work feels like an experiment and the image is a bi-product of that process, which I can happily discard, retain or develop. I may have a plan - or at least an idea - but it is never realised, it is more like a hypothesis in my research process. The image takes a life of its own and I feel like I am discovering it as I work.
I work in a range of media from print to land art and I enjoy what the medium itself brings to the work. My choice of material is to help convey the feeling I am trying to express. For example, the paintings reflect fleeting impressions of beauty, delicate and impossible to control; the graphite in the tree portraits expresses the dogged persistence as the tree grows through many seasons and changing conditions.
I love to draw trees that are in a place that is special to me - or a tree that I find very beautiful, perhaps sunlit as I pass it. The drawings help me recall and pay tribute to those moments. The careful looking at the trunk and bark, the oft repeated visits to collect seed, all contribute to a feeling of connection with each tree that I draw. I also love to focus on plants such as weeds that have no commercial value but do have value within the ecosystem. Giving those plants respect and attention seems important to me.
My tree drawings intend to portray with subtlety the passage of time. Rooted in the ground while reaching to the sky, trees connect us to both past and future human generations. By matching the current profile and circumference of each tree and by repeating each tree’s characteristics – common name, Latin name, location and the date – I aim to echo the endless repetition of seasons through time. At the centre of each drawing is a seed or cutting from that tree that represents both its starting point and its future.
My focus on environmental matters and the exploration of time, trying to make it somehow tangible, are at the centre of my projects with Kew Gardens and the Woodland Trust. Legacy; A Reciprocal Tribute, at the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Wood, Leicestershire, started in 2014 and will continue for the next six decades, recording the growth of the woodland by photographing the same family every year in the same place as the trees in the background shift, grow and transform alongside them.
I enjoy feeling that I am working in collaboration with my subject, the materials and the moment. Unconscious elements, chance elements also emerge and it makes the work feel alive to me.