I am happy to share I will be exhibiting my work at the Aleph Contemporary from the 12th to the 31st October in an exhibition entitled: ‘Landscapes: the visible and the non-visible’, open 10-4 everyday except Tuesday.

This is a collection of lanscape paintings based in the Gloucestershire area, as well as larger work on canvas exploring the impact of pollution from intensive farming.
These three large canvases (100x120cm) are some of my exhibited work on the River Wye.

It is no longer possible to see the landscape as picturesque or part of a Romantic idyll.With climate change and post colonial debate, the land and the landscape holds much that is non visible. The non visible is often uncomfortable andpurposely hidden away.However,it is very much an intrinsic part of what today we know of as landscape and it is constantly evolving.

As a writer as well as a painter, I have been exploring my ownconnection to the Gloucestershire landscape and finding that both my visual work and writing  have common themes of wanting to uncover that which lies beneath the surface.

In the piece I wrote for the Laurie Lee literature prize 2023, I write about the impact of domestic violence on a child living in a Cotswold stone cottage, with roses round the door, in a village that most people would think a perfect place to live.There is often quite a disparity between the perceived landscape we want to believe in and the reality that we don’t see.

Although Gloucestershire has many areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, just beneath the surface there are some uncomfortable truths, such as rural poverty and animal cruelty, within intensive farming.

As an artist I ask myself how is it possible to represent and respond to the landscape?

In these three, large, paintings on canvas  I have used as a starting point the  iconic images of The River Wye, that are used for  marketing by the tourist boards.Despite becoming one of the most polluted rivers in the UK,  glossy, arial  photographs continue to be used to attract visitors. The River Wye catchment area is the home to a quarter of the country’s poultry population, with an estimated 44 million chickens kept in intensively reared conditions.

The intensive poultry farming has resulted in phosphorus rich manure being allowed to accumulate within the River Wye region. This is spread on fields or leaks from heap- storage in the form of manure, when run-off occurs from fields or heaps,for example during rain, the phosphates pollute the rivers.

The high concentration of phosphates in the rivers causes algal blooms,which in turn limits oxygen in the river,makingit hard for wildlife to survive.This decreases the health of the river and the surrounding ecosystems.

Avatar Foods Limited is the largest poultry processor in the River Wye area . It is a subsidiary of the US food and agriculture giant Cargill Inc. It supplies supermarkets and fast food outlets ,including Tesco and McDonalds.

Interestingly it can be hard to spot these numerous intensive farms on Google Earth as they are either listed as coordinates or have names such as ‘Cherry Tree Farm’. Even driving up to one will give you no indication of what is inside. The bare ,security protected buildings offer no trace of the thousands of chickens being processed.

The chickens welfare is compromised by over crowded, filthy conditions, barren environments and rapid growth.Chickens also suffer injury and stress through rough handling during catching, transport and slaughter.They are bred to reach slaughter within six weeks.

I am currently writing an auto fiction trilogy which is based on many of my own experiences growing up in ChalfordHill.In the first book I talk about calling for my friend on my way to school at the age of seven. His father had been a missionary and every morning I would join his family at the breakfast table for the morning bible reading.Over the course of seven days I remember his father reading from the book of Genesis on how the Earth was made.I remember the impression this made on me at the time, the idea that humankind had been given a special custodial role over creation. I have decided to use it as part of the titles of these paintings.

‘On the sixth day God gave man dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth’

Genesis 1 : 26-28,King James Version.