Forest, Field & Sky: Art out of Nature

'Thousands of years ago, Britain was covered in forest.

'Deep, dark, primordial woodland

'that had grown undisturbed for thousands of years.

'These were the landscapes in which our predecessors

'made their first homes.

'But over the centuries, we hacked our way out of the forests

'and built fields and pathways across the land.

'And we made other marks in the landscape.

'We made things of beauty...

'..and in doing so turned nature...

'..into culture.'

Now, I can do something as simple as make a small stone circle

on the beach here.

Now, I'll admit it's not exactly Stonehenge,

but it is a cultural act.

It couldn't have happened without a human hand.

'This basic act is the foundation of all human culture,

'from stone circles onwards.

'But this film isn't about the monuments of the past.

'It's about a marvellous kind of modern art

'that echoes our earliest creative impulses.

'And it's inspired me since I was a boy.'

It's an art that can't be bought or sold, doesn't exist in galleries,

and has to be found before it can even be seen.

It can be as vast as the sky or as small as a pebble.

It can take decades, even centuries to make,

yet occasionally only last an instant.

'In this film, I'm going to discover art that's made

'from nature itself.

'Art that makes us think in a new way about the beauty and wonder of

'the natural world, and the ways we mark our fleeting place within it.

'I'll travel across Britain to find these breathtaking artworks

'and explore the landscapes they inhabit.

'I'll trek through forests and fields,

'around gorgeous gardens, and to the very edges of our island.

'And I'll gaze afresh at the skies above.

'What I find will, I hope,

'change the way we think about the landscape.

'And it might just change your view of modern art.'

'This was the first landscape that humans on our island encountered.

'6,000 years ago, forests like these covered most of Britain.

'At times they must have seemed like dark and forbidding places.

'But I always think there's something undeniably human

'about the forest.'

I often think of forests as being like societies.

They are complex and infinitely interconnected communities,

and, of course, they're made up of individuals,

all living their own lives in company.

'Each tree stands alongside its companions.

'They start small, grow tall, and die.

'An existence not unlike our own.

'We've always had an important relationship with the forest.

'So much of human culture has been built from trees and wood.

'And this connection has inspired one artist to

'create a very special artwork.

'I've come to Snowdonia in North Wales to find it.

'But like many works of landscape art,

'it's exceedingly difficult to find.

'Its location is a secret.

'But what a secret it is.'

'This is Ash Dome.

'22 ash trees mark out a perfect circle 30 feet wide.

'I've been wanting to come here for as long as I've been

'interested in art, and it's more beautiful

'and more moving than I could have imagined.'

'It is an inside made outside,

'a circle of life made from life itself.

'It reminds me of the great ancient circular

'monuments of our predecessors.

'But this is a work of modern art.'

'Ash Dome was made by the artist David Nash, who has lived

'and worked in North Wales since 1967.

'In that time, Nash has devoted himself entirely to making

'sculptures out of wood.

'But Ash Dome was something different -

'a living sculpture.'

Most outdoor sculptures, I felt they were like UFOs,

they'd been made somewhere else and they'd just landed.

I wanted something which belonged to a place

and something which didn't resist the elements but actually

engaged with the elements, so the Ash Dome came from that thought.

'Nash planted Ash Dome as saplings back in 1977, before I was born.'

The '70s was a dangerous time, you know, politically,

economically, internationally.

People were talking about

the human being would destroy itself before we got to the 21st century.

And I thought, "I'll make a sculpture which is

"aimed at the 21st century."

'Nash employed ancient techniques to adapt the shape of each tree.

'And over the years he has continued to tend and train them.'

In all the different films and photographs of it over the years,

since 1977, it gets bigger and I get older, which...!

I really like that, so I'm hoping something will be there

when I'm about 85, if I can get that far, 90,

hobbling about in the Ash Dome!

People talk today about modern culture being too fast,

too disposable, too dispensable,

too much about short-term satisfaction.

Well, this place couldn't be more different,

because this beautiful, beautiful thing has taken the best part of

40 years, the best part of one man's entire career, to make.

And hopefully, like the forest that surrounds it,

it will continue to grow for many years to come.

'Ash Dome embodies the oldest idea of culture - to cultivate.

'It is an art of collaboration, the result of man

'and nature working together.

'But it is also deeply contemporary,

'a living monument to one man's faith in an uncertain future.'

'When Neolithic settlers first arrived in Britain,

'they brought with them wheat, barley and livestock,

'and a new attitude towards the landscape.

'Unlike native hunter-gatherers,

'they weren't content to take the landscape as it came.

'They wanted to reshape it.

'They cut down ancient forest, cleared the land,

'and parcelled it out for cultivation...

'..and so emerged from the darkness of the wood

'to the light of the field.'

To us, a field might seem unremarkable,

perhaps even rather quaint,

but it really was one of the great inventions in the history of

our species, because the field didn't only lead to a new

kind of organised landscape,

it also laid the foundations for the first towns and cities,

societies and governments, and for trade and commerce.

The field, in other words, was the bedrock of civilisation itself.

'Today, three quarters of land in Britain is devoted to agriculture.

'More than anything else, it is the field that has shaped our landscape.

'This is Cumbria, the heart of sheep-farming country.

'It's a patchwork of small fields,

'formed by the dry-stone walls that weave across the land.

'Few have been more inspired by this landscape

'than the celebrated artist Andy Goldsworthy.'

The fields to most people, and the landscape to a lot of people,

is often a pastoral backdrop to weekends in the country,

which is not how I see the landscape.

For me, it is a place to be challenged and to learn,

and the field particularly so

is a place which farmers cultivate and fight for.

It is a battlefield for the farmer.

Without their constant attention

and working the land it will revert back to being a woodland.

'Andy Goldsworthy is best known for the ephemeral works

'he makes in the landscape.

'Short-lived, delicate sculptures...

'..using only the materials he finds around him.

'But some of Goldsworthy's work engages directly with

'the age-old traditions of agriculture.

'From 1996, over a period of seven years,

'he transformed 46 disused sheep folds across Cumbria...

'..into a series of beautiful outdoor sculptures.

'These dry-stone-wall enclosures were originally

'used for the cleaning, clipping and marking of the flock

'before modern farming techniques rendered them redundant.

'And in a quiet valley in the heart of the Lake District

'is my favourite -

'the Tilberthwaite Touchstone Fold.'

Now, at first, this seems to be an ordinary sheep fold.

It's got these dry-stone walls that would have contained the flock,

there would have been a gate right here.

But what Andy Goldsworthy's done is he's made four beautiful

additions into the walls themselves, and this is one of them.

It's an absolutely beautiful sculpture,

made from slate from the surrounding Tilberthwaite quarries.

And what's lovely about it is the way that Goldsworthy has

arranged the stone to create a beautiful visual rhythm.

So you've got these horizontal bands of stone here,

then you've got this circular plane with vertical bands of stone.

It almost looks like a clock face.

And on a bright, sunny day like today,

the stone really seems to shimmer.

What's fascinating about these sculptures is their position,

so that they're all activated by the sun at different times of the day.

So it's about mid-morning now.

That sculpture back there is in complete shadow,

and this one over here, it was in shadow about ten minutes ago,

but now the sun has just come round the edge, and it is creating

this glorious, raking light across the surface of the slate.

'The Sheep Fold Project is a reminder of that ancient

'link between culture and agriculture.

'After all, the building of dry-stone walls,

'and indeed farming itself, is an intensely sculptural activity.

'And like art, it too can be beautiful.'

'Andy Goldsworthy lives and works not far from the Cumbrian Hills,

'in the Scottish Borders.

'Every morning, he walks out into the fields around his home to

'make a work in the landscape.

'And today I'm joining him.

'He hopes to produce an ambitious but risky piece,

'building a vertical stone wall into the shell of a dead oak tree.'

The reason why I love to work with my hands is that friction.

There is this terrific,

wonderful resistance to the land that challenges you.

It creates sensations and feelings that inform me as an artist.

What I do love about walls is the way they're made, stone by stone.

They're a great lesson to sculptors,

they use the stone from the place,

they use the stone for its structure,

and the line that they often take will draw the landscape,

so they're very much an expression of the landscape.

'But despite his deep knowledge of wall making,

'this particular work is proving extremely challenging.'

So, Andy, you've been working on this for

four-and-a-half, five hours now. It looks fantastic to me.

What's your verdict?

I think it's probably not going to...

..going to succeed.

I'm getting closer to the top, it was closer than the last collapse.

I've got a better sense of the...the tree,

and there's certain aspects of it that I'm not entirely happy...

I'm beginning to really enjoy this kind of line there

between the stone and the wood.

You know, so that rakes really well.

So, whilst I would probably be... I'm not going to be entirely happy

if it does fall down, it does give me

the chance to go back down to there and get it reworked.

-And if it does fall, you'll start again?

-I might start...

I mean, I think it's probably reached a point in the day

where it would be better coming again.

This is a work that I can't come back to.

Unlike a lot of the things that I make, that is a one-off,

that-time-only to make that particular work.

'Andy continues to build the wall upwards.

'But then, after hours of hard work,

'what he feared happens.'

-Oh!

-STONES RATTLE

Normally with a collapse like that I would be feeling a little

devastated, and whilst I would have loved to have had this completed,

I think that, er, it's probably,

erm, for the better in that I can get back and rework

some of this, but I haven't got the energy to do that again today.

You know, I've seen something today that's really reminded me

of what art can be.

No dealer, no gallery, no pretentious display caption.

A man simply walked out one morning into nature,

found inspiration, and made something really rather wonderful.

'Andy Goldsworthy's piece didn't last more than a few hours,

'but that, I think, is precisely what makes it so special,

'because like nature itself,

'his work is in a state of perpetual change.

'Several months later, Andy attempted the tree wall again,

'and comes within inches of completing it.'

STONES RATTLE

'Seeing Andy's piece collapse again is heartbreaking,

'but his determination to succeed is an inspiration.'

You know, perfection's really easy to do.

But it's a matter of how much time you have to put into achieving

that perfection, and I think that every day I go out, er, there is

a sort of compromise with the day.

'We collaborated with nature in the forest,

'we intervened in nature in the field,

'but here, on the coast, it can often feel like a battle.

'The repeated clash of water and rock has sculpted the perimeter

'of our land, and will continue to do so long after we're gone.

'But in this turbulent environment, one artist has tested herself

'and her art against the rhythms of the sea.

'In the early 1990s, Julie Brook spent two years living

'in a cave on the island of Jura, off the west coast of Scotland.

'Her intention was to capture the harsh beauty of the island in paint.

'But the experience of living in solitude in such an exposed

'landscape changed the way she made and thought about her practice.

'She wanted to create a kind of art that encapsulated

'the elemental forces that were all around her.

'The result was an extraordinary combination of fire,

'stone and water -

'what Julie Brook called her Firestacks.'

'I've made the long journey across Britain to the Outer Hebrides.

'A landscape of rugged mountains and spectacular sea lochs.

'It's far from any road, and two hours' hike from the nearest track.'

This is one of the most remote parts of the British Isles.

That over there, that's the Atlantic Ocean, and I've come here

because, after 25 years, Julie Brook is once again making a firestack.

'Julie has been here for several days already in all weathers,

'collecting stones to build the stack as well as fuel to burn.

'She can only build at low tide, and twice a day,

'she has to surrender her progress to the sea.'

So, Julie...

Wow, amazing, you're here!

It is the most remote place I can possibly imagine.

Can you tell me where we are and what this place actually is?

Yes, it's, er, it's a very remote part on the west side of Lewis,

just sort of, erm, with North Harris just on its edge,

and we're looking right out to the western Atlantic.

So that's the Atlantic over there.

Nothing, yes, nothing much beyond there, apart from when you,

erm, get to America, I guess.

It does feel like a full ocean of wind is...

-Yeah.

-..hitting us right now. How long have you been making this?

Well, erm, five, six days of building this particular stack,

and then, erm, a previous ten days of building another series prior

to that to, er, get a sense of the tides here,

the way the water flows, the way the tides are coming in, erm,

so, yeah, they're labour intensive.

So now this firestack's up and running,

-what is going to happen next?

-Well, you'll see,

the tide is just beginning to come to the base of it, which is

really exciting, so I'm going to start lighting it quite soon,

and then you get this extraordinary quality of, you know,

the elements all coming together, so you've got the water surrounding

the fire and stone, and then gradually you watch it rising

and you get these incredible ribbons of light from the reflection

of the fire, and it's sort of so much about rhythm,

it's like marking rhythm and marking time, erm,

in such an elemental way.

'With the tide rising fast, Julie is keen to start the fire.'

'The Firestack works can be dangerous and unpredictable.

'A sudden shift in weather could destroy everything in an instant.

'Julie makes countless journeys out into the freezing sea

'to build up the fire.

'Like a silent vigil...

'engulfed by flame and smoke.'

I remember when I first lit one successfully.

It felt so absolutely true.

I felt that I was sort of connecting with something incredibly ancient,

without specifically knowing what that was.

That connection with nature that some people around the world

still have very, very strongly is a very profound thing.

By working, committing and inhabiting the landscape,

in a sense I'm looking for that connection that

I see crofters have here or fishermen have here,

and I think it's something about the purity of that.

'Humans have made markers on the coast for millennia.

'Stone cairns, flaming beacons, monoliths, lighthouses...

'and, for me, the Firestack seems to tap into those ancient practices.

'It too is a marker of human presence.

'With the fire burning brightly,

'Julie makes her last journey to the stack.

'And then she retreats, leaving the elements to decide its fate.'

'As the sun begins to set,

'the fire's reflections dance on the sea like liquid gold.

'For a few glorious moments,

'the elements are in perfect balance,

'and the result is spellbinding.'

'But as the water creeps higher and higher,

'the flames begin to lose their battle with the sea.

'The fire gently weakens...

'..before being completely overwhelmed.'

You know, some people might not think of this as art at all,

but as I stand here on a cold winter's night

in the Outer Hebrides, I honestly can't

think of anything more artistic,

because if this work is about anything, it is

about the act of creation, an ancient act in which humans

have tried to create light and warmth in a cold, dark world.

'As the human presence on our island increased,

'so too have the marks we've left on the landscape.

'We began to draw lines.

'From creative acts like the chalk figures carved in the landscape

'to the great routes laid down in our own age.

'Lines that shape and are shaped by our movements.'

'And one British artist has turned these kinds of lines

'into a body of work that is revered around the world.'

'In 1967, Richard Long walked up

'and down on a single patch of ground until he left a clean

'straight line of trampled grass that glistened in the sun.'

'The piece was called 'A Line Made By Walking.'

'And it is only known by a simple photograph...

'..that is now viewed as a defining work of contemporary art.

'With that piece, Richard Long established

'a set of principles that would govern the rest of his career.'

Art can be made anywhere, perhaps seen by few people,

or not recognised as art when they do.

This is a sculpture I made along a walk in Yorkshire called

'A Line In England.'

This work was made of this place,

it is a rearrangement of it,

and in time, will be reabsorbed by it.

Now it is almost invisible.

I hope to make work for the land, not against it.

My work reflects the passage of time on all things,

just as a walk itself uses time.

'This is Exmoor in North Devon.

'And it was here, a year after 'A Line Made By Walking,'

'that Richard Long embarked on a more ambitious walking piece.

'His aim was to travel exactly 10 miles across the moor on foot...

'..but he didn't want to follow the various paths that

'criss-crossed the moor.

'He wanted to do something a little more challenging.'

Richard Long began with an Ordnance Survey map,

and a pencil.

He marked one point down here

and he marked another point up here,

and then he took a ruler and drew

a dead straight line between them,

just like that.

Now, that line marked a route exactly 10 miles long

on a bearing of about 290 degrees,

and once Long had plotted that route,

he decided to walk it.

'And so I began a journey following Long's imaginary line.

'It quickly passed from cultivated fields to rugged moorland.

'But it didn't follow the natural contours of the terrain.

'It cut a dead straight line across the land.

'It came close to, and often intersected with

'more established paths.

'But then it quickly abandoned them.

'I had to clamber past trees...

'..to leap over fences...

'..and to pass icy ponds.'

I've been walking for a while now,

and I'm beginning to realise that

while it's very easy to draw a straight line on a map,

it's much, much harder to walk a straight line across the landscape,

even in a relatively featureless place like Exmoor,

because everywhere there are obstacles,

there are fences, there are puddles and divots

and bogs, and then of course you have to fight that perennial human

instinct to take the easier route, to take the well trodden path.

'The walk carried me forward, north-west...

'..past other earlier lines that had been made in the landscape.

'But then, after 10 miles,

'I descended from the moor into steep, thick, shaded woodland.

'This is where Richard Long's line terminates.'

So, according to Richard Long's map,

this precise spot here in

this place called Cowley Wood, this is the destination.

And I'll be honest with you, after 10 miles of walking,

I was expecting more.

'It is a work that creates more questions than answers.

'This map, with a line drawn through it, is all that

'remains of Long's walk.

'But is this the art?

'Or was it the creative effort of the walk itself?

'Or the trace in the landscape made by Long's feet?

'All this makes us think again about what art can be.'

A walk marks time with an accumulation of footsteps.

To walk the lanes and roads is to trace a portrait of the country.

I have become interested in using the idea of a walk to express

original ideas about the land, art, and walking itself.

'Long's art has certainly provoked controversy over the years,

'as seen in a debate from a 1983 BBC documentary.'

What makes you say that it's art?

Because Richard Long says it's art,

his arrangement of stones and his work...

If people say something is art

we have to proceed on the assumption that it is.

A lot of people say things are art, but they're not very interesting.

-Is it art?

-He says it's art, and...

-That's assertion again, though, of course.

-You see, it's assertion.

Oh, well, of course it's bound to be assertion.

No, it isn't, you see, what I think...

Well, can you try and define what art is, Ted?

I'm not even going to try

and I'm not going to be put in that position by you or anybody else...

Not everyone likes Richard Long's work,

but I genuinely think his art is for everyone

because walking is something that virtually all of us do, whether it's

across moors or down high streets,

or even just from our front doors to our cars every morning.

But what he tells us

is that even this seemingly banal act can be an aesthetic act as well.

It can be beautiful, it can be imaginative, and it can help us

understand our place in the landscapes that surround us.

'But I also see something ancient in Richard Long's lines.

'It makes us think again about how we, as humans,

'might have first negotiated the landscape.

'How people have walked

'and drawn lines across the British Isles for thousands of years.'

'There is another, very different kind of landscape on which

'we have had a major impact.

'But more than any other, it's a landscape shaped

'entirely by human culture.'

From the Neolithic period onwards, humans reshaped the landscape for

many different reasons, some of them practical, some of them spiritual.

But in the more modern period, we began to remodel the land simply to

make it more beautiful,

and nowhere is this better expressed than in our gardens.

'It seems like a strange idea.

'Surely we can't hope to make nature more beautiful.

'But humans have long created their own miniature

'versions of the landscape.

'The 18th century is, in my opinion,

'the golden age in British gardens,

'a time when designers forged a winning balance between

'the natural and the artificial, the real and the ideal,

'and their inspiration came from art.

'This is a painting by the great 17th century French artist

'Claude Lorrain.

'It looks natural, but it obeys a strict formula of ideal beauty.

'Tall trees frame the scene.

'Ancient buildings emerge from the landscape.

'A winding river leads the eye past a bridge and into the distance.

'It looks like paradise.

'So taken were the British landed class by this vision in paint

'that many of them remodelled their estates according to

'Claude's blueprint, and among the first to do so was Henry Hoare.

'From the 1740s, Hoare set to work transforming his garden

'at Stourhead in Wiltshire on a grand scale.'

'He dammed up the Stour River to create an artificial lake.

'He planted hundreds of trees with precision.

'Constructed an undulating valley out of earth.

'And built numerous classical style follies and grottos around the lake.

'But the climax of the garden is here.

'It is surely one of the most beautiful views in Britain,

'and it has all the ingredients of one of Claude's pictures -

'the framing trees, the curving lake, the ancient temple.

'It is a fantasy made real.'

Alexander Pope once wrote that all gardening was landscape painting.

Now, I always thought that was a rather silly comment to make,

but this, I think, is proof that he was completely right,

because what Henry Hoare has done here at Stourhead is

exactly what artists had done before him.

He has rearranged nature,

composed nature to make it more beautiful and more pleasing.

'Hoare wasn't alone.

'Across the estates of Britain,

'naturalistic landscape gardens became the height of fashion.

'And today gardening has become a national obsession,

'the way that so many of us attempt to make nature our own.

'But while most of our gardens are simply there for pleasure,

'one artist has attempted to go further.'

'I've come to a modern garden in Dumfriesshire to meet a man

'who has done things that would astonish even Henry Hoare.'

'This is the Garden of Cosmic Speculation,

'and there is no mistaking the human hand here.'

'It's as far from a naturalistic garden as it's possible to get.

'And yet it is based on the underlying

'principles of nature itself.

'The fractals, black holes

'and wave forms that form our understanding of the universe.

'This extraordinary garden was created by the landscape artist,

'architect and theorist Charles Jencks.'

'Born in America, Jencks began developing the garden

'at his home in Scotland in 1988.'

I think when you see the sun go down,

and you see the earth form these pathways,

and the light is at the top, you definitely feel as

if you belonged here, as if this is a part of you.

It's not just a projection, it's kind of a deep feeling,

and I think you get that in landscape, erm...

And you don't get it in any art that is not bigger than you.

'More recently, Jencks has completed a new work -

'the Crawick Multiverse,

'a monumental series of land forms in Dumfriesshire.

'It references so many ancient monuments -

'stone circles, long barrows and burial mounds.

'But this is inspired by the science of our own age.'

So how do you see your relationship to nature?

We're part of nature, but as religions have always said,

we're different from nature,

and I think both are very deep inside us.

And so landscape art,

and art in general, should show that very strange human relationship

to the universe, er, that is both feeling at home

and feeling separate from it.

I know that everything here has multiple meanings...

-Yes.

-..but what are you trying to achieve with this garden?

Well, I'm trying to achieve the old idea that we're

partly at home in the universe and we should celebrate that.

And if you haven't enjoyed it and found it amusing and colourful

and sensuous and delightful...

It should do all of that,

so I think if you're not happy in this garden,

er, I've failed.

'I don't think Charles Jencks has failed.

'What he has achieved both here

'and at the Crawick Multiverse is hugely impressive.'

Charles Jencks' garden is a microcosm of the universe itself.

Now, of course, it's absurdly grandiose, of course it is,

but in a way, all gardens are worlds within worlds.

All gardens are ways by which humans try to negotiate

a place for themselves amid the mysteries of nature.

'The garden is our most explicit attempt not simply to

'reshape nature, but to possess it.

'But while we can possess the land,

'one natural realm will forever elude us.'

"It is a strange thing how little in general people know about the sky.

"It is the part of creation in which Nature has done

"more for the sake of pleasing man,

"more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him

"and teaching him than in any other of her works.

"And it is just the part in which we least attend to her.

"There is not a moment of any day of our lives when nature is not

"producing scene after scene, picture after picture,

"glory after glory.

"The noblest scenes of the earth can be seen and known but by few,

"but the sky is for all."

'I love these words, written by John Ruskin more than 100 years ago.

'And he is, of course, right.

'Too often we ignore the beauty that lies above us.

'It is indeed the eternal masterpiece.

'And in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, one structure has been

'devised expressly to draw our focus up to the sky.

'For me, it is one of Britain's most inspiring artworks.'

So this is it.

It's a small square room, surrounded on all sides by concrete benches.

It's a simple place, actually quite understated, but what's

important about it, what's beautiful about it, is up there.

'This is a "Skyspace," by the American artist James Turrell.

'In the middle of the ceiling,

'he has cut an aperture that opens directly onto the sky.

'All he asks his viewers to do is open their eyes and look up.

'As one slowly adjusts to the scene, one becomes transfixed.'

This has been one of the great, great experiences for me,

and, you know, the skyspace does something really miraculous,

it makes the sky come indoors, it really feels like the sky is

hovering inside this room, that you could even reach up and touch it.

And, you know, I've been sitting here for a few hours now,

and watching this incredible drama unfold above me,

I've seen this amazing palette of blues change,

I've seen clouds scud across the ceiling,

and I've seen the odd cameo of birds and jet planes.

And, you know, it has been gripping, completely gripping throughout.

I think one of the lessons that James Turrell teaches you is

patience, because you can't just come in here

and spend 30 seconds and then walk out again.

You have to sit down, you have to look up, and you have to just wait,

and you have to adjust to the rhythms of nature.

And, you know, it reminds me that

the greatest art

does something very simple.

It makes the familiar seem completely unfamiliar.

It makes you see the world in an entirely new way.

'I couldn't bring myself to leave the skyspace.

'So I stayed on into the evening.

'And inside, there was more magic to come.

'As the sun sets, perfectly adjusted lights have a remarkable effect

'on the colour of the sky at dusk.

'The sky turns an overwhelmingly intense blue, deepening more

'and more as the night encroaches.

'It is like an abstract painting made by nature itself.

'On my travels around the British Isles,

'I visited six distinct landscapes.

'And I've found inspiring

'and beautiful things everywhere I've gone.

'I've seen some artworks thrive for decades.

'And others only last a few moments.

'I've seen unforgettable, elemental struggles.

'And peaceful, but thought-provoking havens.

'Each of them taps into our ancient desire to make a mark on the land...

'..while redefining what modern art can be.

'And each of them finds beauty in a world we often take for granted.

'Together they prove that art is everywhere.

'All we need to do is go out into nature and find it.'