You don’t need to go far to have an adventure. Earlier this summer I headed to Sutton Bank with my daughter for an early evening walk. We spotted a large caterpillar and some orienteering markers, she explored some dens that had been built, and we watched the rain showers move through the Vale of York from the viewpoint (and just about beat the incoming rain shower back to the car!) Even though it was still a couple of hours before sunset, the place felt different, a reminder of how even in a place, our experience of that place is ever changing and unique to us, depending on the time of day, season, weather, company and our own perspective.
One of the challenges I enjoy with creating landscape art is not just to create a sense of the place, but also to create a sense of the place at a particular moment in time. Taking notice of the colour of water in a lake that changes as the sky changes, seeing whether the grass in the fields is a fresh new green or the yellowed dryness after a spell of hot weather, spotting which flowers are in bloom, casting long shadows as the sun sits lower in sky, following the ripples on the water or the movement of the trees as the wind blows through them. So many of these things we often see without really noticing. Perhaps in part, landscape art is an invitation to spend time noticing a place and looking at it in a different way.
