The Yorkshire Dales
Paintings of the landscapes where I live
Wherever you go the Yorkshire Dales the natural landscape carries imprints of the people who have lived here.
Dry stone walls contour the hillsides, barns inhabit the corners of fields, and old roads climb across the moors and lead towards villages, castles and ruined abbeys. Beneath the high country are the remains of mines and the memories of people whose lives were spent working this landscape.
I've lived among these hills and dales for most of my life, yet a sudden shaft of sunlight, a rolling bank of mist or the golden rays of evening can still make a familiar place seem entirely new.
These paintings are my response to that endlessly changing landscape — to its weather and light, its stories and silences, and the people who have given it the character it has today.
The Personality of Place: The Yorkshire Dales
The idea that everywhere has a personality is one that has guided my work throughout my career. Whether writing poetry, songs or making pictures it is something that draws me onward towards what a place is saying to me. It's not a new concept - The Romans gave a name to the spirit of a place — genius loci — and made it part of their religious world. We still recognise something of it today. Walk into a house for the first time and you may immediately think, “Yes, I could live here.” Or you may feel that something isn't quite right, without being able to explain why.
Travelling around the Yorkshire Dales, I sometimes find the personality of a place almost overwhelming. There are lonely stretches of moor, dark woods, strange rocks and quiet valleys where it isn't difficult to understand how stories of fairies, hellhounds and ghosts came into being. But there is more to it than atmosphere. These hills are full of the traces of people who have lived and worked here. Their stories become part of the landscape too. A place is never quite the same once you know something of what has happened there.
All of this finds its way into my paintings. It influences the colours I choose, the light I create and what I decide to give prominence to. I am not trying simply to record what a place looks like. I want to catch something of how it feels to be there — and of what makes it unlike anywhere else.
It also gives me a way of judging whether a painting has worked. Does it feel true to the place as I know it?
About three quarters of what I paint ends up in the bin. That may sound rather drastic, but if a painting doesn't feel authentic to me, how can I expect it to feel so to anyone else?
The paintings gathered here are a selection from more than thirty years of exploring the Yorkshire Dales. Some are places I've returned to many times; others caught my imagination through a particular story, a sudden change in the weather or an unexpected encounter.
Together, they are my attempts to get a little closer to the personalities of these remarkable places.
Travelling around the Yorkshire Dales, I sometimes find the personality of a place almost overwhelming. There are lonely stretches of moor, dark woods, strange rocks and quiet valleys where it isn't difficult to understand how stories of fairies, hellhounds and ghosts came into being. But there is more to it than atmosphere. These hills are full of the traces of people who have lived and worked here. Their stories become part of the landscape too. A place is never quite the same once you know something of what has happened there.
All of this finds its way into my paintings. It influences the colours I choose, the light I create and what I decide to give prominence to. I am not trying simply to record what a place looks like. I want to catch something of how it feels to be there — and of what makes it unlike anywhere else.
It also gives me a way of judging whether a painting has worked. Does it feel true to the place as I know it?
About three quarters of what I paint ends up in the bin. That may sound rather drastic, but if a painting doesn't feel authentic to me, how can I expect it to feel so to anyone else?
The paintings gathered here are a selection from more than thirty years of exploring the Yorkshire Dales. Some are places I've returned to many times; others caught my imagination through a particular story, a sudden change in the weather or an unexpected encounter.
Together, they are my attempts to get a little closer to the personalities of these remarkable places.
The Places
The Yorkshire Dales have been shaped as much by people as by nature.
The great sweeps of moorland, limestone crags and glacial valleys give the landscape its underlying form. But look more closely and almost everywhere there are signs of the people who have lived and worked here.
Stone walls, the ruins of lead mines, crumbling drovers' inns and barns populate the landscape. Packhorse tracks cross the high ground, while the remains of coal workings and old railways recall days that once filled these quiet valleys with activity.
Castles and abbeys speak of other kinds of power and ambition. And scattered among them are places whose stories are harder to explain: dark-shadowed gills, ancient carved stones, lonely farms and paths associated with ghosts, fairies and other inhabitants of the imagination.
These different layers are what make the Dales so endlessly interesting to me. A landscape may appear almost empty, yet be crowded with evidence of the people who passed through it.
The great sweeps of moorland, limestone crags and glacial valleys give the landscape its underlying form. But look more closely and almost everywhere there are signs of the people who have lived and worked here.
Stone walls, the ruins of lead mines, crumbling drovers' inns and barns populate the landscape. Packhorse tracks cross the high ground, while the remains of coal workings and old railways recall days that once filled these quiet valleys with activity.
Castles and abbeys speak of other kinds of power and ambition. And scattered among them are places whose stories are harder to explain: dark-shadowed gills, ancient carved stones, lonely farms and paths associated with ghosts, fairies and other inhabitants of the imagination.
These different layers are what make the Dales so endlessly interesting to me. A landscape may appear almost empty, yet be crowded with evidence of the people who passed through it.
