“The manifestation of this exhibition has, like the tree at the centre of it, slowly been growing over the years. My early life was spent playing in, or cycling to school, through the towering beech woods near my house in Bristol. Later, as a student graphic designer, my pre-digital era Art School training ignited a love of photography and screen printing and the slow reveal of image onto paper via a manual process. I’ve always been most comfortable near nature and inspired by natural beauty and power. Its not surprising then that as my design career developed I was always drawn to the work of other artists, architects, designers and environmentalists who harness or take equal inspiration from natural sources.

In 2014 a similar tree to this fell to a storm in my Dorset garden, and seeing an opportunity, I started to experiment with small slices cut from that tree. I emulated the techniques of others whilst experimenting with different printed outcomes. Around that time I had a vision to produce a really large tree artwork as something unique and which could tell an equally unique story. This led to a chance encounter with the woodsman who had reclaimed the colossal Pitt Rivers trunk, which now stood amongst other eclectic timbers in a remote part of Wiltshire. On visiting his woodyard I was nearly put off by the impossibility of the scale involved, but prior to lockdown I took receipt of several sections of the reclaimed trunk, and pulled my first washi paper prints. With a view to exhibiting, its taken a few more years of invisible personal growth for the history of this tree to be revealed, and a what a history it is. We can see the entire 20th century within it, what led up to it, and where the 21st century is taking us…”

— Jonathan Ford