Graham Ovenden

In an era of extreme formal aesthetic experimentation that has embraced such notions as the concept behind a work of art is more valuable than the work itself, or is in fact the work, landscape has not been recognised as a vital field of contemporary art . It has on the one hand either been regarded as the provenance of the outdated and unfashionable or the domain of the amateur watercolourist. In fact the strong romantic association between English art and the natural world is often unjustifiably viewed as a provincial and at best idiosyncratic concern. An artist such as Turner is often valued only because, in certain instances, he was respected by the French Impressionists, and can be said to have anticipated the use of pure colour in abstraction. This ritual purging of the past, which ends in the valuation of only that which seems to relate to the art fashion of the moment, is a superficial action which now ironically has had its day.