Caburn Dressed for Spring (2024) is a richly layered mixed-media painting shaped by the ancient rhythms and sensuous and emotional weight of the South Downs.
Acrylic, ink, and graphite are worked into a pale, luminous field of chalky whites, soft greys, muted greens, and earth tones; colours that feel weathered, lived-in, and lifted from the hillside itself. Across this surface run horizontal striations, some delicately inscribed, others pushed into thickened ridges, forming a tactile topography that echoes the musical staves of a well-worn score.
These lines draw directly from the lynchets, the age-old folds in the hillsides carved by centuries of ploughing, grazing, and the slow, repetitive movement of sheep. In the painting they re-emerge as the ghost-lines of a landscape palimpsest; layers of human and natural history pressed into the land and resurfacing here as texture, rhythm, and vibration. Embedded within the surface are marks that resemble asemic writing, half-legible notations, fragments of imagined transcripts, and the faint suggestion of words that might once have been spoken or written. The painting invites the viewer to read it, but never fully reveals its language.
The work positions the landscape as both notation and memory. Its layered marks carry a sense of musicality, as though the Downs hum with their own score: the murmur of weather systems, the rise and fall of birdsong, the repetitive percussion of footsteps, and the quiet resonance of human presence across time. This subtle sound-world deepens through graphite inscriptions of lines from a poem written by the artist’s partner, Cordelia. These words are scattered, partially buried, and intentionally elusive; encouraging viewers to come close, to search, to feel their way across the surface rather than simply observing it.
Presented in portrait format to recall a sheet of music or a manuscript page, the composition becomes simultaneously a landscape and an instrument. Its undulating contours and textured passages are meant to be felt as much as seen, inviting the viewer into a sensory experience: touch translated into sight, sound translated into mark. Elements inspired by field recordings of local birdsong appear as blurred grey vibrations, interwoven with the horizontal rhythms of the land, collapsing the boundaries between environment, memory, and notation.
In this way, Caburn Dressed for Spring becomes its own landscape; layered, resonant, and shaped by both remembered and imagined histories. It reflects an intimate, ongoing relationship with the Downs: an act of walking, listening, reading, and dwelling within a place formed equally by natural forces and centuries of human touch. The result is a painting that holds its stories quietly, inviting viewers to discover them not all at once, but gradually, through closeness, attention, and contemplation.
Medium: Mixed media with layered canvas on stretched canvas
Dimensions: 120 × 160 cm
Series: Caburn
Finish: Wax varnish to enhance tactility
Caburn Dressed for Spring (2024) is a richly layered mixed-media painting shaped by the ancient rhythms and sensuous and emotional weight of the South Downs.
Acrylic, ink, and graphite are worked into a pale, luminous field of chalky whites, soft greys, muted greens, and earth tones; colours that feel weathered, lived-in, and lifted from the hillside itself. Across this surface run horizontal striations, some delicately inscribed, others pushed into thickened ridges, forming a tactile topography that echoes the musical staves of a well-worn score.
These lines draw directly from the lynchets, the age-old folds in the hillsides carved by centuries of ploughing, grazing, and the slow, repetitive movement of sheep. In the painting they re-emerge as the ghost-lines of a landscape palimpsest; layers of human and natural history pressed into the land and resurfacing here as texture, rhythm, and vibration. Embedded within the surface are marks that resemble asemic writing, half-legible notations, fragments of imagined transcripts, and the faint suggestion of words that might once have been spoken or written. The painting invites the viewer to read it, but never fully reveals its language.
The work positions the landscape as both notation and memory. Its layered marks carry a sense of musicality, as though the Downs hum with their own score: the murmur of weather systems, the rise and fall of birdsong, the repetitive percussion of footsteps, and the quiet resonance of human presence across time. This subtle sound-world deepens through graphite inscriptions of lines from a poem written by the artist’s partner, Cordelia. These words are scattered, partially buried, and intentionally elusive; encouraging viewers to come close, to search, to feel their way across the surface rather than simply observing it.
Presented in portrait format to recall a sheet of music or a manuscript page, the composition becomes simultaneously a landscape and an instrument. Its undulating contours and textured passages are meant to be felt as much as seen, inviting the viewer into a sensory experience: touch translated into sight, sound translated into mark. Elements inspired by field recordings of local birdsong appear as blurred grey vibrations, interwoven with the horizontal rhythms of the land, collapsing the boundaries between environment, memory, and notation.
In this way, Caburn Dressed for Spring becomes its own landscape; layered, resonant, and shaped by both remembered and imagined histories. It reflects an intimate, ongoing relationship with the Downs: an act of walking, listening, reading, and dwelling within a place formed equally by natural forces and centuries of human touch. The result is a painting that holds its stories quietly, inviting viewers to discover them not all at once, but gradually, through closeness, attention, and contemplation.
Medium: Mixed media with layered canvas on stretched canvas
Dimensions: 120 × 160 cm
Series: Caburn
Finish: Wax varnish to enhance tactility
