This series of drawings looks at the agricultural impact of intensive farming on the East Anglian countryside. Natural habitats have been degraded and fragmented with a corresponding loss of biodiversity and flora and fauna. However this land is still considered by many to be quintessentially idyllic “countryside,” even though it has little value for wildlife.
During Victorian times the “Arcadian landscape” as depicted by artists such as Constable was romantic, bucolic and blissful but the origin of this term came from Virgil’s poem “Ecologues” which portrays a complex landscape of pastoral scenery, albeit against a backdrop of hardship, war and loss. The political and social threats to our countryside have never been greater, the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world.
These drawings look to capture both the ‘golden age’ ideal of Arcadian landscape, as well as reflecting the underlying tension resulting from the complex realities of human experience in these particular locations.
