UNEARTHING

An artist residency commissioned by Chase & Chalke LPS 2022

Chase and Chalke Landscape Partnership Scheme worked with artist Sara Dudman throughout 2022 to unearth and share the fascinating stories, geology and histories of the Chase and Chalke area through its earth colours.

Sara undertook 4 ‘Sporadic Nomadic Walks’ through The Chalke Valley and Cranborne Chase in March ‘22, accompanied by fellow walkers, bringing local, natural history, architectural and historic knowledge to their walks. They followed ancient routes and pathways that criss-crossed the landscape, collecting carefully chosen earth pigments to create artworks that re-interpret their experience of the landscape; referencing trees, flora, geology, history, pathways and ancient settlements.

Sara describes herself as a ‘hunter-gatherer’. But she wasn’t only hunting for the raw materials with which she has made the paints and pastels used in the artwork here. She searched out the myriad of stories which every footstep revealed, with help from wonderful volunteers and local knowledge of farmers, artists and an archaeologist.

Earths and rocks collected during the walks were labelled with the exact location and description of where they were found, resulting in a collection of pigments, paints and pastels, each with a story to tell. 

Sara collected specimens of wildflowers growing along Shire Rack on Day 4 of the ‘Sporadic Nomadic Walks’ and on a further visit to Win Green, abundant with wildflowers in May. The flora-based paintings follow the tradition of botanical art, but using paints created from the earths from which the plants have grown and in turn will also become. 

Much of Sara’s residency revolved around mapping. Shire Rack, an ancient shire boundary, originating as a series of oak trees by which locals navigated their way through forests on their hunts, was one of many features encountered, researched and explored during the ‘Nomadic Sporadic Walks’, each documented in the 4 large map artworks.

As well as making her own new body of work, Sara worked with communities to create collaborative paintings and drawings using natural earth pigments foraged from the landscape. The collected rocks, soil and chalk were transformed into earth-pigment paint. The artworks together tell the visual stories of Cranborne Chase’s natural environment, geology and history.