When: 3 Apr 2010 - 7 Apr 2010

Venue: Chapel Row Gallery, 6 Chapel Row, Bath BA1 1HN

Contact: Tom Henderson Smith, T. 01736 787268, enquiry@hendersonsmith.co.uk

Tags: sunshine, road, valley, hillside, trees, houses, stones, paths, Ancient, mining, farming, Landscapes, people

Lived-in landscapes (See all the work going into this show at www.hendersonsmith.co.uk ) and there's a selection of it in one my galleries here on The Arts Site.

What guided my approach to image making in creating this collection was a fascination with all those aspects of landscape that suggest human presence. Having a stronger than ever awareness of this aspect as I roamed the countryside led me to see it as what I'm calling a Lived-in Landscape. This all started with realising that the theme of a cluster of buildings, that had featured in some of the pieces that made up my previous exhibition at Falmouth Arts centre in October 2008, was something I wanted to explore further. Then, as I began to pursue this theme I found myself drawn to depicting other features reflecting human presence and influence as well.

The part of Cornwall where I'm based has a rich and varied history. Centuries of farming and a long history of mining have left a clear imprint. The themes I've been able to use have therefore ranged from field patterns to ancient sites, from clusters of buildings to well worn paths and a tragic and haunting image from the history of tin and copper mining. This thematic aspect was one lived-in element of the new series.

Another aspect which I became increasingly aware of had more to do with the very process of painting or drawing. It came from the fact that translating these images into varied areas of colour, tone and texture involved literally living in these compositions that derived from landscape. I found that lingering over the colour mixtures, the paint layering and the brush or finger marks that I was using began to coax a feeling of life into what I was doing. This is something that I relished and that gradually led me to a sense that the piece I was working on was beginning to have a life of its own. One aim became to bring this quality to a pitch of vividness unique to the painted image.

Two books have resonated for me with the experience of living with these landscapes. One was The Making of the English Landscape by W. G. Hoskins which was recommended by a visitor to my studio in the spring of 2009. Its reference to the great antiquity of some of Penwith's field boundaries in particular struck me and then led to a sense of how pervasive human influence has for so long been in forming many aspects of this terrain. The other book was a novel called John Pascoe by J. C. Tregarthen whose imaginative recreation of a young man's experience of life in 19th century Penwith helped to make more vivid my sense of this as a truly human landscape.

As the collection of paintings and charcoal drawings reached completion I came to realise that the experience of making each of these pieces had one thing in common for me: an increasing awareness of life-states reflected in the landscape, the life-states of those who have lived here and of myself as I focused on expressing this awareness. It was the reality of these life-states that I came to feel were reflected back to me and lived-in through the process of painting.