At Kingsthorne: Trees, fields and flowers...

A wintery late Sunday drive led us threw the windy lanes to Kingsthorne.

Kingsthorne is a little village that a couple of locals planned out on the back of a beer mat. I mean this in a kind way, I really do. It's got inner ring roads symbolic of village with bigger plans. The fact is, it's built on the fertile hilly Herefordshire landscape. A rural retreat of a village with a top and a bottom. The road circles around the village, curving round the hilly mound.

It must a wonderful place to grow up. It's what I call, quintessentially British. The landscape in this case, not flat but fields crafted with the shadowy tendrils of branches. Linear frames of trees border many of the fields. There's a striking continual contrast between the changing British rural landscape and the reassuring familiarity of the trees. Trees are life's stable object. Of course they are continually changing, but they are a constant source of reference. A subliminal measurement on life. Trees change. But they remain silent and strong. We trust that the world is right by the flowering blossom, the fruit falling, and the orange and red glow of autumn. Their wintery silhouettes become a lot like ourselves in the cold misty air, like the black figures of people in a Lowry painting shuffling feet, just getting through it.

Artist Andy Watts just understands trees. His work is a reassuring wonderment. Andy's eye for detail is remarkable, he creates structure and balance allowing the viewer to gaze far across and into the treescape. British Landscape painting. It defines and frames our countryside. Artists like Andy are key to recording and defining what is England. It's not all rolling views and haywains, you know. Our trees are the definition, framing and balance to our lives. This artist works on perfecting that......and he's really good at it too.......