Fields, Rivers and Dreams — The Fenland Landscape from Above

Fields, Rivers and Dreams — The Fenland Landscape from Above

Seen from above, the Cambridgeshire Fenlands reveal a geometry that is invisible at ground level. The dykes and drains run in straight lines across the flat terrain, dividing the land into rectangles and parallelograms of varying colour and texture. The rivers wind between them, their curves a counterpoint to the rigidity of the drainage system. From the air, the Fens look like a vast, abstract painting — a composition of lines, shapes, and tones that has been made by human hands over centuries.

Aerial Photography and the Landscape

Aerial photography of the Fenlands reveals aspects of the landscape that are simply not visible from the ground. The scale of the drainage system, the relationship between the rivers and the fields, the way the light falls differently on different types of soil and crop — all of these become apparent from above in ways that ground-level observation cannot provide.

These aerial images have been a significant influence on my painting. The abstract quality of the landscape seen from above — the reduction of the familiar to pattern and geometry — is something that I find endlessly productive as a source of visual ideas. The paintings that result are not aerial views in any literal sense, but they carry something of the aerial perspective: the sense of looking down on a landscape that has been organised by human intention.