Four Birds in Mist 0ver Chudleigh

I am a compulsive walker in the Devon landscape. Dartmoor is high on my walking list, the coast a little lower, but the most likely place to find me is in the Devon lanes. There are no crowds there and I can lose myself. Wherever I walk I use my camera to photograph things overlooked or unseen by most. I look for oddities, rhythms, complexities, and remains of previous lives and industries, and often share time with farm and wild animals and birds who like to observe me observing them.

 

Since moving from the south Devon coast to the country town of Chudleigh (during the middle of the pandemic) I have been combing the lanes and hills all around almost obsessively, to the point where I now know a great many of them very well indeed. I feel this is how it should be: to make art (I hope) around the places you know and understand really well; not to travel compulsively to foreign lands (or even the next county) and repeat photographs that have already been taken a thousand times by other tourists.

 

I have no formal art training, having worked most of my life as a bookseller until I took an early retirement. But I have always loved photography - for well over 40 years - and my darkroom experience has been replaced by digital practices, so I am able still to print my own photographs and have an obsession (another one) with paper. I also handmake occasional books and zines and enjoy developing projects in the landscape that may unfold into a small book. One of my images submitted is of Lidwell Chapel near Little Haldon - a place with the dubious honour of being (according to legend) a temporary home to a murdering monk! I've visited many times and in May 2023 produced a zine containing 26 of my images of the chapel taken over the last 5 years. This zine has been commercially printed rather than hand printed.

 

Photography

56x46cm

Framed in a wooden frame