Artist’s Own Tales from the Landscape:

Richard Dickson 

I have been photographing the world around me since childhood, developing my practice over the last 15 years with works exhibited in the UK and abroad. Recently, thinking about what I photograph, I realise that it is things that move me at the time. Then, often it is later that I perceive a similarity in certain images that can be built into a theme, exploring and identifying the images themselves, sometimes bringing a new meaning. I enjoy experimenting with different materials and processes that often reveal another meaning. In the case of the South Downs series it was after I tested a sheet of experimental film I immediately knew the result would fit the  scenes in my head from the Downs expressing the felt sense at the time. 

My tale of the Sussex Landscape

I moved close to the Downs three years ago, although I used to visit when I had family living here. That move coincided with some major  surgery and I used walking to help rebuild physical fitness. I noticed how peaceful that can be with sheep and cows contentedly grazing together; beautiful views to the sea or inland to the hedgerow bound fields and distant villages. I noticed the stark beauty; rough chalk paths, spiky gorse, wooded coombes, a single line of trees, the rolling, arable fields, all tempered by the landscape etched with the vicissitudes of the elements, giving a sense of their power. Living near Lewes now, I have explored more discovering new areas and vistas, and cannot drive along the road without constantly glancing to the side to take in the diverse and ever changing views with the seasons. It is the most inspiring landscape I have been in and so happy that it is on my doorstep. 

Website: www.ipercept.co.uk

Stephanie Fawbert 

My paintings reflect the atmosphere and mood of the East Sussex landscape where I live and work. My bright, dynamic watercolours depict the soft roll of the South Downs and the sweeping open vistas of the chalk uplands, while my small oil paintings show a more mysterious, magical interpretation of landscape. The figures in my paintings are immersed in nature and they communicate a sense of quiet drama being acted out and perhaps a reciprocity between humans and the world around them. 

My tale of the Sussex Landscape

All the locations depicted in the oil paintings are local to Sussex yet are not recognisable places. They celebrate nature in their depiction yet are anonymous. In this way they take us to a place of collective reverie in which the physicality of the paint, with drips and washes, intensifies the world depicted in them.

Website: www.stephaniefawbert.com

 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stephfawbertartist

Nathaniel Fowles

I predominantly paint in oil and acrylic, depicting landscapes and scenes which captivate my imagination. I am drawn by the history, narrative or character of a place and seek to capture a sense of mood and light within my work.

My tale of the Sussex Landscape

Since moving to Sussex from London twelve years ago I became enthralled by the local scenery and how it is possible to see Iron Age hill forts, Roman roads and the remains of medieval villages all in the same landscape. The evocative landscapes and their accompanying stories have reignited a lifelong fascination in mythical creatures and characters which are so intrinsically interwoven with the Sussex countryside. These tales etched in the landscape include the sad story of the amateur highwayman, Jack Upperton and the lost medieval village of Barpham, both within the Angmering Park Estate. The ancient Yews of Kingley Vale and the Broadwater Midsummer Tree provide further inspiration, as does the inspiring, beautiful and mysterious Chanctonbury Ring. From narrow winding country lanes, to sweeping hills and downland views meeting the sea, the Sussex landscape continues to inspire.

I would love to share my passion for these tales with you so please do ask me about them and share your tales with me as I am here throughout the exhibition!

Website: www.nathanielfowles.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nathanielfowlesfineart 

Rosemary Jones 

I specialise in linocut printmaking, with a focus on the landscape of the Downs in West Sussex, where I live. The views on my beach and countryside walks, with the blue of the sea and the sky, inspire my many-layered and multicoloured reduction linocut prints. All my prints are original handmade linocuts, made with real ink, on real paper, on a real press. Each one is unique. 

My tale of the Sussex Landscape

Around 50 years ago as a student at Brighton Polytechnic, I wrote the following. It was my response to seeing the hills of the South Downs from the train going to Falmer:

“Chalk lands their swelling sweeps and swirls of valleys held like a frozen rocky sea in winter. Trees in valleys small grown closely to the land and ice clings to the frosty shadowed slopes. Valleys wind away swooping down in curves of brown green white and beige. Blue blazing blinding white of brilliant sky above moving to mingle with the rolls and waves of hills chalk white and bright in the sun of winter intoxicate me. Warped fields, their hedges curved and high and low swing up and round and down to swaying floors of living earth. Sharp cut each tree field house – the sun dips down in hollows of eternal white of chalk and living being slowly joined with sky and grass and trees and earth”

About 20 years ago, I encountered the work of Eric Ravilious. He just knew what the Downs look like and I understood this after seeing his painting ‘The Downs in Winter’: I saw what he saw on a trip to the old Towner Gallery in winter. I wrote an essay about him and I’ve been following him around ever since, seeking out the places he painted. His media were watercolour and wood engraving, and mine is linocut.

Website: https://rosemaryjonesartist.co.uk/ 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosemary.jones.artist/ 

Frances Knight 

I’m Frances Knight, a contemporary artist who specialises in painting landscapes and seascapes en plein air. I love the immediacy of plein air painting as focusing on the overall visual effects rather than the details allows me to capture the transient effects of light. When painting I try to achieve a harmony through colour, light, and structure so that each painting conveys the experience of the quality of light and the feeling of being there.

My tale of the Sussex Landscape

I feel one is aware of the eternal nature of beautiful linear structures when painting the South Downs: people come and go, but these hills and their clear linear shapes have endured through centuries as a backdrop for events on the surface over time. 

The enduring quality of these abstract shapes is the underlying meaning in my paintings. Light and seasons change the atmospheric effect, but there is a fundamental ‘oneness’ to the whole landscape that is the basis of the stories and eventualities of the human lives that inhabit it.  

Through my paintings, you are invited to enter the atmospheric wholeness of the landscape, its ever-changing light and to appreciate the underlying oneness through the effects of nature.

Website: www.francesknight.com  

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/francesknightfineart/

Andrew Milne 

I have lived in Sussex my whole life, from early years in Clapham village and more recently on the edge of the South Downs National Park near Worthing. Over years of walking the land and noticing shapes and colour, almost in an abstract sense, a composition will present itself that resonates – hills, woods, fields, crops, chalk paths, etc. Through my use of colour and bold mark making I aim to use the qualities of paint to communicate the joy of creation in the landscape to the viewer, who often recognises in them their own experiences of time and place.

My tale of the Sussex Landscape 

The Chanctonbury Hill area has long been associated with the supernatural. Stories of pagan worship, ancient and modern abound. The area however is now the focus for a vision of the renewing of the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. In the painting ‘Seeking a New Eden’ people are looking forward to the time when the earth will be restored to its original glory and purpose.

Website: www.andrewmilneart.com 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andrewmilneart/ 

Jon Winter 

Learnt to ride a bike as a kid. Went everywhere on two wheels. Learnt to draw as a kid. Went to art school in Canterbury. Learnt to make stuff. Found a career in publishing. Grew up. Learnt about life. Kept making stuff. Kept riding my bike. The distances got longer. Cycling became as much a way to keep my head on the straight and narrow as a way to explore the world. Began spending hours and hours in the saddle. Journeys became an accumulation of transitory moments - fleeting glimpses caught in your peripheral vision. Landmarks come and go, landscapes change, transforming with the light and the weather. Scribbling some of these moments down seemed the natural thing to do.  Still riding my bike, still drawing, still learning. 

My tale of the Sussex Landscape

My work combines my love for cycling with drawing, creating, and capturing moments in the landscape. I create textured digital drawings and reduction linocuts inspired by cycling through the Sussex landscape.

The Long Man of Wilmington: Set off on a cold, January day towards the Long Man only to find myself ill-equipped when a shard of Sussex flint got the better of my tyre crossing the Pevensey Levels. That’ll teach me.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/landscapeanddistance/