Following the Line: A Painting Journey

Like beads on a string, the author captures images along the line of Longitude 2º West, from the point where it arrives, from Africa, Spain and France, and crosses the Dorset coast at Dancing Ledge, until it re-enters the sea just north of Berwick-on-Tweed.

Begun as an art project in 2000, it was laid aside in 2001 as life took a different direction. The thread was picked up again twenty years later in 2021, after the winter of Covid Lockdown. The pull of the open countryside, so long denied, and the mounting threats to the earth from climate breakdown, made it imperative to continue The Line to its end and put something on record.

This is not a historical or geographical survey. There are few knowledgeable facts. It isn’t a hiking guide or tough outdoorsy book. Fuelled by love of the earth - its delights and oddities, it is more a book that says ‘Hey look at this,’ or ‘Guess what I found...’
The images start with student experiments in 2000/2001. From 2001 to 2012 the author went through a period of loose, free-wheeling abstract paintings, selling successfully.

By 2021 it seemed like a bad idea to keep bombarding the burdened earth with yet more canvases, so (taking the tip from David Hockney) she began creating pictures on a laptop, using one finger on the touch-pad and a fairly basic graphics programme. Her initial efforts and gradual improvement, can be seen as the book progresses along The Line.

”Whenever I’m on the loose, the earth reminds me that it belongs to me as much as to anyone else. Mine to love, to take care of and to celebrate.”

All profits from the sale of this book will go to The Woodland Trust.