I’m very happy to host this exhibition of Ella Clocksin’s new series of paintings at my studio at Rookley Manor, Isle of Wight. I have always had a special connection to her work and feel that her new body of work, which relates to our visual, internal and existential connection with nature, makes an important contribution to what a lot of us think currently about.

The opening will be Sat 15th No 2019 6.30pm, Ella will talk about her work in discussion with myself. There will be something small to eat and drinks afterwards so as to make contact and spend some time together. Please let me know if you intend to come so that we can prepare refreshments; there will be a Facebook event later on where you can select ‘Going’ (link to follow).

She says about her new work: ‘Forests in myth and story are both frightening and exciting. It is all too easy to get lost in the woods. They are places of testing and transformation. Of being lost. And found.
The project site is the ancient tracts of Wytham Woods, dating from the last Ice Age. Wytham is a University of Oxford research centre for woodland eco-systems.
The project touches on the ways we exist alongside, but also as part of, our landscape. We are part of the ecology we inhabit.
And the paintings are notations of that experience - neurological and sensory, poetic and metaphoric - of being deep in the woods. The painting practice responds directly to a living ecology, as the external landscape intersects with the internal landscape.’

Ella Clocksin, an artist, writer and tutor, lives and works in Oxford.