Purbeck-based artist Brian Graham is driven by the links between past and present found in natural landscapes. He is particularly inspired by Dorset, drawing from memories of the spaces that have surrounded him since childhood. The disciplines of archaeology and planetology are also crucial. The scars and remnants of early histories and communities shape Graham’s experience of the land.
Image Credit: Brian Graham, Cranborne Chase, 1991, Acrylic on canvas, ©Brian Graham, Museum & Art Swindon (Presented by Mark Golder and Brian Thompson in appreciation of Meryl Ainslie’s services to the arts, 2017)
Graham’s painting Cranbourne Chase suggests an enigmatic and dramatic landscape. The overlapping forms, marks and colours evoke layers of history, both known and unknown. Stories of the land lie just beyond our comprehension, beneath a dark threshold and chalky spheres. Everything is waiting to be revealed.
Cranbourne Chase is a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty that overlaps the boundaries of Dorset, Wiltshire, Hampshire and Somerset. The links between this landscape and the literature of Thomas Hardy, make Graham’s painting an important work in Wessex Landscapes. In his fictionalised version of Wessex, Hardy used landscapes throughout the region as backdrops, against which significant moments in his characters’ lives play out.
In Tess of the D’Urbervilles, Hardy describes “the soft azure landscape of the chase – a truly venerable tract of forest land, one of the few remaining woodlands in England of undoubted primaeval date…” Yet for Tess, it is the place where a great tragedy in her life unfolds. The world that Hardy created adds another narrative layer to the landscapes that inspire Graham’s work. The land is rich with history, both real and fictional, physical and metaphorical.
‘Wessex Landscapes’ is an exhibition of modern and contemporary artworks from the collection at Museum & Art Swindon. Exploring creative interpretations of the Wessex landscape created by Thomas Hardy, it accompanies ‘Hardy’s Wessex’ in the main gallery.
