Autumn Birches was born in the late Summer of 2006, in a wood near Gironde-sur-Dropt in Aquitaine, South West France. I was roving in the French countryside with my drawing pad and some sticks of charcoal. As I walked along a country road, I looked sideways into a wood that seemed to stretch on for ever. The trees were uniformly spaced, which allowed my eye to gauge distance precisely. But as the trees receded from view, they fell into the deep darkness of the wood. So, though man had planted this wood some ten or fifteen years previously, on a geometric pattern, ultimately the trees were taken over by darkness. It was, on that hot and sunny afternoon outside the wood, looking in, as if the trees were looking back, breathing, waiting for something to happen.
Since drawing this wood, I have seen the same configuration of trees in other places in France, in Scotland and at Anglesey Abbey, outside Cambridge. They always seem to me to be expectant, waiting for someone else to make the first move, but somehow ready. Again, what I was seeing was the interaction between man and the landscape.
The original wood no longer exists, having been harvested for wood about two years ago. One day, it was gone.
Autumn Birches is printed using Hawthorn inks on 140gsm white cartridge paper. Image size 150mm x 150mm. Paper size 296mm x 420mm. Edition of 15.
The price shown includes postage and packing for delivery to a UK address. Every print dispatched is wrapped in acid-free tissue paper and securely packaged in a sturdy cardboard tube, and delivered to the address required by post via Royal Mail or Parcel Force (depending on the size of the print) and signed for upon delivery.
If you would like a print delivered to an address outside the UK, please let me know when ordering and I will investigate whether you need to pay anything extra to cover the increased postage price.
