Suffolk Reverie

‘Tree Houses I – IV’ interpret a Suffolk plantation through earths and pollens collected on site, together with motifs of the dominant tree species and their relationship with the neighbouring Baptist chapel. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

‘Tree Houses I – IV’ are individual portraits of the trees, created using natural pigment paints made from earth samples collected from the plantation. During my first site visits in March, an abundance of yellow Scot’s pine pollen coated the ground beneath the trees and characterised the woodland for that seasonal moment. The collection of wild earth pigments (both earths and pollen) connects simultaneously with the deep history and constantly evolving ‘placeness’ of the plantation and the transient colour and seasonality of the trees and woodland plants. 

 

 

Together with established oaks and beech trees, the plantation is dominated by silver birch and Scot’s pine, these being trees that can thrive in the difficult sandy soil at the edge of the windy East Suffolk Coast and Heathland. The plantation inverts expectations of the Suffolk coastal flatlands, full of horizons and open skies. Instead, the verticality of the increasingly untethered plantation, obscures the horizons, become a flickering screen, concealing and revealing the geometric silhouettes of the chapel as one roams the woodland. The manmade plantation is in a process of it’s own rewilding, lately untouched by human intervention, the natural ecology is developing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The idea of tree houses is playfully fantastical, echoing the cabin in the woods and suggesting occupation. Sitting, walking, resting, listening, observing, foraging, drawing accompanied by birdsong; this place becomes a magical, secret, hidden refuge.