Artist Statement
I am a photographer living in the east
of England and am currently completing my BA in photography with the Open
College of the Arts. My background is in
wildlife and traditional landscape photography. As
I have progressed through my studies I have begun to question the way I
represent the world. My current work is
inspired by wilderness and the natural world which I explore by walking. Not the wilderness of wide-open spaces but wilderness
on a much smaller scale. Robert MacFarlane writes 'I had started to refocus. I was becoming
interested in this understanding of wildness not as something which was hived
off from human life, but which existed unexpectedly around and within it: in
cities, backyards, roadsides, hedges, field boundaries or spinnies.'
(MacFarlane, 2007.pp 226-227). The mountaineer, W.H. Murray, also wrote
of the same experience as long ago as 1951. 'Through the very
uncertainties of our climb my mind became unusually observant, embracing many
simple things that commonly pass unregarded. While searching for a
handhold the eye would alight on a blade of grass peeping from a crack, and see
the amazing grace of its fluting, the fresh brightness of its green against the
rock; and although the joy was that of one second the memory lived on.'
(Murray, 1951, p.62) My work is now beginning to focus on wilderness on a
smaller scale: woodland footpaths or the way an old brick wall is reclaimed by
the wild. It is informed by photographers
and artists such as Eliot Porter, Paul Gaffney, Hamish Fulton and Richard Long
all of whom portray wilderness, often by walking.
MacFarlane, R. (2007) The Wild Places, Granta, London
Murray W.H. (1951) Undiscovered Scotland, Dent Publishing, London
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