The Changing Seasons of the Malvern Hills Through My Art

The Fields of Happiness

I have lived near the Malvern Hills for many years, and somehow the landscape still manages to surprise me. The longer I live here, the more I seem to notice: the shape of a bare tree against the sky, the curve of a road disappearing between fields, the patterns made by crops and hedgerows, or the way the same hillside can look completely different from one day to the next.

When I am out walking, I rarely look at a landscape simply as a view. My mind starts translating it almost immediately. I begin imagining the marks I might carve into lino, the colours I would use, or how I might rearrange what I am seeing into a painting or sketch.

I take photographs and often sketch while I am out, but the finished work usually comes from a mixture of those references and my memory of the place. I am not particularly interested in making an exact representation. I might take the curve of a field, the shape of a house, a group of trees or a pattern that caught my attention and bring them together in my own composition.

What I really want to keep is something of how that moment felt.

Spring: watching the landscape wake up

Spring is probably the season I love almost as much as autumn.

There is a point when you begin to see the first green returning to the trees and suddenly everything starts happening. Snowdrops appear, followed by daffodils, blossom, bluebells and those extraordinary yellow rapeseed fields. It feels like a big chain of gorgeousness happening one thing after another.

After the quieter colours of winter, I find that change incredibly energising. I feel more alive and optimistic as the landscape becomes greener, and naturally that finds its way into my work.

A Walk in Rapeseed Fields

Colour begins to return, but so do patterns and small details. Flowers creep into the foreground, fields become more vivid and the whole landscape seems to gain another layer.

That abundance gives me so much to play with in a linocut. A field doesn't have to be one flat area of colour. It can become lines, dots, carved marks and repeated shapes. A hedgerow can become a rhythm. Flowers can become simplified forms rather than individual botanical studies.

That translation from what I see into marks and shapes is one of the things I enjoy most about printmaking.

Summer: a green ocean

By summer, the landscape around the hills can feel almost like a green ocean.

Everything is full. Fields roll into one another, trees become great masses of green and wildflowers appear along paths and field edges. And, when the British weather cooperates, there are those wonderfully long days and beautiful changes in the light.

Summer isn't actually the season that excites me most creatively, but there is something about its fullness that I love.

Sea of Tranquility 

In my work, I don't necessarily try to reproduce all that green literally. I am much more interested in what else I can find within it: lines travelling across fields, contrasting colours, flowers interrupting large areas, little houses in the distance, the geometry created by farming and the softer shapes created by the land itself.

Sometimes I exaggerate those things because that is how I remember them.

Autumn: when colour takes over

Autumn has always been my favourite season.

The colours drive me crazy.

There really isn't a more sophisticated way for me to put it.

As soon as the landscape begins changing, I want to be outside. The cooler weather makes me want to walk more, and the colours seem to shift constantly. A group of trees that looked mostly green a few days earlier can suddenly be filled with yellow, orange, rust and red.

Even familiar places become new again.

Autumn Days

This is probably the season when my natural attraction to colour, pattern and rhythm becomes most obvious.

I notice rows of fields, the direction of ploughed earth, repeated tree trunks and the bands of colour stretching across the landscape. Those things already contain their own patterns before I have done anything to them.

When I begin a piece, I can push them further. Furrows can become sweeping lines, fields can flatten into shapes and colours can become much more intense than they might have appeared in reality.

I'm not trying to document the countryside accurately. I want the work to carry the energy I felt when I saw it.

Winter: when the structure appears

Winter gives me something completely different.

Once the leaves disappear and much of the colour drains from the landscape, I start noticing structure.

I love bare trees. Without their leaves you can suddenly see every branch and irregular shape. They can look quite vulnerable standing against a winter sky, but also incredibly beautiful.

The colours become quieter too: blue greys, soft whites, deep darks and muted earthy tones.

Wild Winter

For someone who works with linocut, winter is particularly interesting because the landscape can become naturally graphic.

Dark branches against a pale sky, white houses against fields, rows of trees and strong divisions between land and horizon all begin to suggest carved marks before I have even started drawing.

Sometimes there is very little colour at all, yet there is still so much going on.

Perhaps that is why I never find winter visually empty. When the colour disappears, other things become louder.

Finding landscapes rather than copying them

I do have favourite walks around the Malvern Hills, including some of the less obvious routes that tend to be better known by people who live locally. But there isn't one particular viewpoint that appears again and again in my work.

Sometimes I see a scene that immediately interests me and photograph or sketch it. Other times it might only be one small part of the landscape that stays with me.

Later, in the studio, those fragments begin to move around. A house doesn't necessarily have to remain beside the field where I first saw it. A tree might come from another walk entirely. I might simplify a hill, alter the colours or invent parts of the composition.

In that sense, my landscapes are partly observed and partly remembered.

The Gentle Caress of Autumn

I don't want them simply to show what a place looks like. I want them to hold something of what it was like to be there and notice it.

A landscape that keeps changing

Living near the Malvern Hills for so long hasn't made the landscape feel overly familiar to me. Strangely, the opposite has happened.

The more I walk here, the more I see.

I discover paths I haven't taken before. I notice different shapes and patterns. The light changes. Fields are planted differently. Trees grow and change shape. Sometimes I suddenly notice something that must have been there for years but that I had somehow never really seen before.

The landscape keeps giving.

And I think my work has changed alongside it.

Poppies Unveiled

Over the years I have become less concerned with describing every part of a scene and more interested in finding its rhythm: the shapes, marks, colours and atmosphere that make me stop and look. I feel my work is gradually becoming more harmonious with the landscape that inspires it, while my own visual language continues to evolve.

Whether I am carving a reduction linocut, painting or simply making a sketch, I am trying to do much the same thing: to catch something before it changes again and keep a little piece of that moment.

If you’d like to see more of my work, you can explore my original linocut prints here.