“Trees In Art”
by Charles Watkins
Charles Watkins explores the myth and magic of arboreal art mentioning The Arborealists as modern enthusiasts. Drawing on the author's deep knowledge of the history and ecology of trees, Trees in Art shows that we can learn much about ourselves from the art of trees.
ISBN13:9781780239309
‘‘Art Meets Ecology: The Arborealists in Lady Park Wood”
Art Meets Ecology:
Arborealists in Lady Park Wood
By George Peterken, Tim Craven, Christiana Payne
Features work by The Arborealists – an informal group of professional artists with an interest in painting trees and woodland
Both a compendium of original artworks and an explanation of how natural woodland works, linked together in a way that seeks to build a combined appreciation of part of our natural environment.
This new book features the paintings and drawings created by The Arborealists in Lady Park Wood, an ancient, semi-natural wood on the slopes and cliffs of the Wye Gorge on the borders of England and Wales. Uniquely, the wood, which has been left to grow naturally for up to 150 years, has been studied in detail since 1944 and the fortunes of hundreds of individual trees have been tracked for three-quarters of a century. The artworks are matched with a commentary by George Peterken, who has led the research since the 1980s. Both artists and ecologists observe trees and woods closely, but express their understanding of the wood in totally different forms. The two interests came together to deepen their understanding of each other and their different perspectives in an interest they share and promote a broader interest and understanding of native woodlands generally. Elm disease, the great drought of 1976, storms, snow and now ash disease have taken their toll on the ageing beech, oak, lime, ash, yew, hazel and many other species, many of which now lie prone in great heaps of dead wood and re-growth.
The writers:
Tim Craven is an artist, freelance curator and lecturer. Over the course of a career spanning 37 years at Southampton City Art Gallery (1980–2017), Tim managed and developed the internationally renowned permanent collection centred on historic and modern British art, acquiring over 1,000 works of art. He also curated and co-curated many and various temporary exhibitions at Southampton and elsewhere. These included such subjects as the Euston Road School, the Camden Town Group, British Surrealism, St Ives, the Systems Group, Photorealism, cartoons and contemporary practice, for which he contributed essays and introductions to the accompanying exhibition catalogues.
Christiana Payne is Professor of History of Art at Oxford Brookes University. She has published widely on British landscape painting of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and has curated many exhibitions, including ‘A Walk in the Woods: A Celebration of Trees in British Art’, shown at the Higgins Bedford in 2017–18. Her most recent book, Silent Witnesses: Trees in British Art, 1760–1870, was published by Sansom & Co in 2017.
George Peterken was a forest ecologist with the Nature Conservancy and successor bodies before working independently, partly as a nature conservation consultant for the Forestry Commission. As an official, he was responsible for starting the ancient woodland inventory and negotiating the nature conservation aspects of forestry policy. He has written books on woodland conservation and management, natural woodland, the Wye Valley and Meadows. Since the 1970s he has maintained the long-term ecological study in Lady Park Wood. He lives in the Wye Valley between Offa’s Dyke and the river Wye.
Anne Rainsbury is Monmouthshire’s Community Museums’ Curator. Working across its three museums at Abergavenny, Chepstow and Monmouth, she interprets the collections and communicates Monmouthshire’s many rich stories about its people and places – in displays, special exhibitions and events, working with groups and individuals from the local community and beyond. She also works to add to the rich arts and cultural life of the county, both by showcasing regional talent and by attracting nationally important artists, performers and speakers to come to Monmouthshire, and also through the exhibition of culturally significant objects and artworks from national and major museums and art galleries.
This project has been supported by the Sustainable Development Fund, a Welsh Government Initiative in the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
128 pages / 270 x 210mm
full colour illustrations
Softback
ISBN: 978-1-911408-68-0
Publication date: September 2020
“The Arborealists: The Art of Trees”
In collaboration with
Bilingual catalogue English/French
Catalogue bilingue français/anglais
80 pages, full colour illustrations, including works of:
80 pages, illustrées en couleur, incluant des travaux de :
Jemma Appleby, Richard Bavin, Philippa Beale, John Blandy, Karen Bowers, Brandy-Dalschaert, Hannah Brown, Buckmaster-French, Stella Carr, Peter Clossick, Gary Colclough, Tim Craven, Blaze Cyan, Tom Deakins, Michelle Dovey, Jane Eaton, Alex Egan, Paul Finn, Joanna Greenhill, Abi Kremer, Ffiona Lewis, Hannah Maybank, Fiona McIntyre, Wladyslaw Mirecki, Alex Pemberton, Julian Perry, Howard Phipps, Michael Porter, Paul Ridyard, Lesley Slight, Angela Summerfield, Jacqueline Wedlake Hatton, David Wiseman
ISBN 978-0-9555510-5-5
Published by Plato-Beale Productions 2017
"A Tree Within"
by Arborealist Fiona McIntyre
An exhibition to coincide with the publication of Arborealist artist Fiona McIntyre new book 'A Tree Within'.
A monograph with interview by Art Historian Dr. Alan Wilkinson and a foreword by Southampton curator Tim Craven. The book explores Fiona's artistic development from Edinburgh to Scandinavia to the Cotswolds until her recent incarnation as an Arborealist.
http://sansomandcompany.co.uk/shopping/fiona-mcintyre-a-tree-within/
Exhibition
14th September - 31st October
The Bishop’s Palace
Wells - Somerset - BA5 2PD
Telephone: 01749 988111
Jo.watkinson@bishopspalace.org.uk
https://bishopspalace.org.uk
http://www.fionamcintyre.com/index.aspx?sectionid=1212414
"The Arborealists: The Art of the Tree"
Published in conjunction with an exhibition at St Barbe Gallery, Lymington
23 April – 4 June 2016
sansomandcompany.co.uk/shopping/the-arborealists-the-art-of-the-tree/
The Arborealists: The Art of the Tree
With essays by Philippa Beale, Dr. Angela Summerfield and Peter Davies
Publication date: April 2016
Price: £25 softback
ISBN 9781908326867
Trees provide a wonderfully versatile subject for artists, not only in terms of the incredible diversity of form, character and colour they provide, whether individually or collectively, but also in terms of the wealth of association, myth, folklore, religious and symbolic significance which they have come to embody. In Britain they have inspired artists from Gainsborough and Constable through to Paul Nash, the Neo-Romantics and the Ruralists.
The Arborealists grew out of the exhibition Under the Greenwood: Picturing British Trees – Present held in 2013 at St. Barbe Museum & Art Gallery, an exploration of contemporary artists' responses to the tree. Such was the impact of the show and the spirit of camaraderie engendered in a truly diverse group of artists that they took on a more permanent identity. Under the Arborealists' banner a loose association of artists, including such luminaries as David Inshaw, have come together for exhibitions in galleries across the south. The thirty-seven artists who have contributed to this book include Jemma Appleby, Ann and Graham Arnold, Mary Anne Aytoun-Ellis, Buckmaster and French, Tim Craven, Michelle Dovey, Ffiona Lewis, Annie Ovenden, Julian Perry, Howard Phipps, Michael Porter, Wladyslaw Mirecki and Dr. Angela Summerfield.
The work included in this lavishly illustrated book, at turns dramatic and contemplative, demonstrates that trees still have a relevance in contemporary art and retain the power to move us all as a vital element in our landscape and sense of national identity.
Essay by former Royal Academy Senior Curator sets out the historical and international background to artists' relationships with trees (inc. Gainsborough, Constable, Van Gogh, Munch, Klimt etc.)
The first study on one of the most significant British artist groups to emerge in the 21st century
Features previously unpublished images and personal insights into the work of these contemporary painters
Will appeal equally to lovers of art, nature and the British countryside
Lavishly illustrated throughout
ISBN 139781908326867
“Under the Greenwood:
Picturing the British Tree From Constable to Kurt Jackson”
Anne Anderson and others
This celebration of the British Tree features the work of approximately 80 major artists of two centuries from the early 1800s. The twentieth century is strongly represented, as are our contemporary artists.
...
sansomandcompany.co.uk/shopping/under-the-greenwood
Under the Greenwood, Picturing the British Tree From Constable to Kurt Jackson
Sansom & Company, 2013
ISBN 978-1-908326-30-0
270 x 210 mm
204 pages with 100 mainly colour illustrations
English, Softback