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As has been my modus operandi for around a decade these big landscapes are created from charcoal resulting from their destruction by wildfire.
I have long been inspired by Robert Pogue Harrison's seminal 1992 text; Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, such that over the last few years we have corresponded from time to time.
I live near enough to the the New Forest wildfire, and am familiar enough with, to have recognized immediately the distinctive smell on the breeze.
Last year, while teaching in North Yorkshire a wildfire broke out on Langdale Moor in the North York Moors national park and I collected and made a piece using charcoal from there. Recently, and just before the New Forest Fire I followed the news of the fire at Dunwich in Suffolk. I was due to have a small group show in Aldeburgh at that time which for various reasons didn't happen.
This all seems remarkably coincidental - that in several places fires have happened where I am, doing what I do. However I think it is indicative of the frequency and intensity of the climate heating up to such an extent that we are all a mere spark away from a fire nearby and I am in no way a 'storm chaser' - wildfires are terrifying.
Harrison open his book with this quote from Giambattista Vico's The New Science:
'This was the order of human institutions: first the forests, after that the huts, then the village, next the cities, and finally the academies'.
Harrison develops the idea that the Forest was our/humankind's first foundational home and that subsequent civilizational developments flow from there, from creating a clearing in the trees through to the 'invention' and naming of the Forest through the enactment by William I of the 'Forest Law'. The wild wood was no more.
The New Forest ablaze encapsulates with high irony the history and classification of forests particularly in the UK. The New Climate has laid claim to the New Forest and both are the result of the desire to control, codify and to extinguish 'the wild'
Wildfire Charcoal on Cradled Panel
180 × 80cm
2026
As has been my modus operandi for around a decade these big landscapes are created from charcoal resulting from their destruction by wildfire.
I have long been inspired by Robert Pogue Harrison's seminal 1992 text; Forests: The Shadow of Civilization, such that over the last few years we have corresponded from time to time.
I live near enough to the the New Forest wildfire, and am familiar enough with, to have recognized immediately the distinctive smell on the breeze.
Last year, while teaching in North Yorkshire a wildfire broke out on Langdale Moor in the North York Moors national park and I collected and made a piece using charcoal from there. Recently, and just before the New Forest Fire I followed the news of the fire at Dunwich in Suffolk. I was due to have a small group show in Aldeburgh at that time which for various reasons didn't happen.
This all seems remarkably coincidental - that in several places fires have happened where I am, doing what I do. However I think it is indicative of the frequency and intensity of the climate heating up to such an extent that we are all a mere spark away from a fire nearby and I am in no way a 'storm chaser' - wildfires are terrifying.
Harrison open his book with this quote from Giambattista Vico's The New Science:
'This was the order of human institutions: first the forests, after that the huts, then the village, next the cities, and finally the academies'.
Harrison develops the idea that the Forest was our/humankind's first foundational home and that subsequent civilizational developments flow from there, from creating a clearing in the trees through to the 'invention' and naming of the Forest through the enactment by William I of the 'Forest Law'. The wild wood was no more.
The New Forest ablaze encapsulates with high irony the history and classification of forests particularly in the UK. The New Climate has laid claim to the New Forest and both are the result of the desire to control, codify and to extinguish 'the wild'
Wildfire Charcoal on Cradled Panel
180 × 80cm
2026