Emma Jayne Holmes
Participating in We Live With The Land
Emma draws and paints the landscape. More recent work has looked at light on the landscape and how a familiar landscape can completely transform, to stop you in your tracks with a certain (natural) lighting. She has a particularly engaging view from her current studio window, from where she has studied the view in its constantly changing weather and lighting conditions. She records how her perspective and interpretation changes; walks into those areas further inform her understanding of the space she is viewing.
Having spent lockdown developing a vegetable plot and learning about permaculture (she is currently doing an online course too), she has been pondering how these interests influence her artwork. Feeling it as a worthwhile pursuit, it has lead her to read a wider range of literature regarding the land, its use and particularly its changes over the past 60 or so years. A landmark book, Silent Spring has highlighted to her the abuse of chemicals on the land and its impact on birdlife, and consequentially many other species. A walk with the local an AONB officer introduced her to the idea that the countryside we see has not always looked like that and much of it still needs to change further back, introducing more hedgerows, forests and less animal farming on some of the moorlands. It changed my perspective and has had me exploring what countryside is, how can the many pressures put on these spaces by an ever increasing population with a thirst for the outdoors be managed.
Emma’s home is within an AONB and World Heritage site, where there is currently a project entitled “Our Picturesque Landscape” - ‘a scheme of sustainable woodland management work around the Pontcysyllte aqueduct to carefully reveal some of the key views of and from the World Heritage Site’. I have been observing the works as it is an area she frequents and her home overlooks one of this main landmark feature. Before coming to the first retreat, Emma observed a notice that the tree cutting would be commencing soon and she plans to go and sketch the area as it changes. She is excited by the possible links and connections this project could make with this proposed project. She is also word playing with Picturesque - mispronounced, it can sound like “picture skew”, reflecting the changing perspective of the landscape and those viewing it.
