This book is similar to an earlier one in this series, Anne Wroe’s ‘Six Facets of Light’ but is somewhat broader in scope. But in both cases many, but not all, of the artists and writers they discuss, walked in the countryside and in doing so their ‘their imaginative responses to our landscape’ in both art and literature, began to form. As Susan Owens says in her introduction, ‘ it became clear that men and women have written about the land, and drawn and painted it… For centuries artists and writers have climbed Britain’s mountains, boated down its rivers, studied its skies and got down on their hands and knees for a closer look.’ For many of them if they wanted to see more of the British Landscape walking was their only option.
The first artist the author mentions in her Introduction is Samuel Palmer; later in her chapter on Vision (ch.V1), she writes more about him and his art:
‘Growing up in South London, on the eastern fringes of Walworth, Samuel Palmer often went on long walks with his father. They could reach the pretty village of Dulwich on foot from their home, and Palmer later called it, ‘the gate into the world of vision’ because of the countryside that lay beyond. It is easy to imagine him on those boyhood visits… longing to plunge on into the hills and lanes of Kent.’
And later Owens writes again about Palmer: ‘After moving to Shoreham in 1826, he and his friends set out on nocturnal rambles around the lanes that made the local people wonder what they were up to. Mistaking their easels for telescopes, they muttered that they must be ‘extollagers’, out to study the night sky.’
In her epilogue Owens says:
If, I thought, there was a single place where I could reflect on the themes of Spirit of Place, it would be Yorkshire Sculpture Park, …near Wakefield… the park echoes the ideal landscapes invented by Claude Lorrain, with sweeping lawns, scattered trees, a lake that reflects the house and a ha-ha that seamlessly connects the near-at-hand with distant views.’
But the work of art that Owens had particularly come to see was Deer Shelter Skyspace(2006) by the American artist James Turrell.
‘The structure, which once served as a refuge for deer, was constructed in the 1770s: an enclosure created by a drystone wall, encompassing an elegant triple-arched shelter that backs on to a low hill. By the last 20th century the structure had partly collapsed... Turrell’s idea was to restore the arched shelter to its original form, but to create an entrance from its back wall, with a corridor leading right into the hillside itself. From there he excavated a chamber in which he made an opening out on to the top of the hill.
Today, walking into the hillside feels like the beginning of a fairytale. Entering the Skyspace, I find myself in a light-filled chamber that does indeed feel magical. I sit on a bench that runs around the edge, look up and see the sky, crisply framed. Skyspace works with great simplicity and gentle insistence; it asks us to focus, to think about nature, and art, and how, consciously or unconsciously, we frame the world around us …Skyspace also invites our thoughts to fly up into the infinite world beyond.’
Deer Shelter Skyspace photograph by Yorkshire Sculpture Park via ysp.org.uk