"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti


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Sunday, May 9, 2021

Hugh Dunford Wood - Poetry in Paintings

 
Landscapes

“No longer do stones, springs, trees or animals speak to man, nor can he speak to them. Through scientific understanding our world has become dehumanized.” ~ C.G.Jung.

Landscape painting is an unfashionable genre. Many people regard the landscape with unease, for its association is rough and unsophisticated.

Most of us today live urban lives, out of balance with the natural world. All around us lies evidence of our neglect, for the culture we have constructed is in contrast, even in opposition, to the wildness of the natural world.

My paintings are therefore an attempt to address this imbalance, to bring the outside in. I am a figurative painter at present looking at woodland and at coastline. There is meaning and virtue in landscape which can have a positive effect on our living and working spaces.

These are metre large canvases painted out in the field. They take a full day to paint in a race against cold, hunger and the dying of the light. They attempt to make order of the riot of the natural world to present a field of contemplation to urban man.

 - Hugh Danwood 


Above Beer Head



Cobb Gate



Achilles Bay Bermuda



Caseford Shaw



Lambert's Hedgerow



Coneys Castle



Farm at Dunkerswell



Bedruthan Steps



Above Stoke Abbot



Garden in Bermuda



Bottom of Hell Lane



Shinbone Alley Bermuda



Swerford Valley



Sussex Copse



Turner's Hill



Church ope Cove



Devonshire Dock Bermuda



Green Lane



Colne Valley



Happy Valley



Hillside in September



Autumn Hedgerow



Bermuda Beach



Breakens Head



Quarry Lane



Red Bicycle



Tempest Wood



Landscape



Landscape



Tuscan Castle



Hell Lane



The Unfinish Church Bermuda



Traitors Ford


Hugh Dunford Wood


HuHugh Dunford Wood has worked as an independent artist designer since student days at Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art in the 1970s. He made a good living painting landscapes and portraits; he ran a fashion business for 15 years handpainting mens’ ties with a team of 24 artists under his direction. He designs crockery, jewelry, furnishing fabrics and wallpapers.

He is a member of The Devon Guild of Craftsmen, Artist Member of the Royal Western Academy, Visiting Tutor at West Dean College, and was guest lecturer at Open University of the Arts. As a volunteer he ran art workshops through the London’s Passage night shelter, where he developed the Streetwise Artpack for homeless people. He ran art courses for detainees at Campsfield Removal Center, and at HMP Belmarsh and other prisons. He worked on a portrait project with prisoners in Philadelphia Correctional Facility, USA.

Artist in Residence at The Royal Shakespeare Company (where he developed an art therapy course with actors), and the Globe Theatre when it first opened in 2000, and The Museum of Bermuda Art in 2009 to mark of the 400th anniversary of settlement. He has also been Artist in Residence with the Church of England in London.

He has exhibited widely in London and abroad with work in the collections of the V&A Museum, Christchurch & other Colleges at the University of Oxford, various County Councils, and private collections in Europe and America.

Hugh has always been keen to demystify and disseminate the role of the arts, co-founding the first Open Studio Weeks in Britain in 1983, in Oxfordshire, and the Lyme Regis ArtsFest in 2003. He curates the pop-up National Gallery of Lyme Regis for Dorset Arts Weeks.

Hugh likes to encourage others to develop their creative potential, as he has been fortunate in his life. He initiated a series of creative exercises while Artist in Residence at the Royal Shakespeare Company, and subsequently developed these with prison inmates, homeless men & women, asylum seekers and refugees.

In the last 10 years Hugh has been developing a series of workshops sharing more specific skills such as the Wallpaper Weekend Workshop, Cushion Design Workshop, The iPad Workshop, Collino Workshop and Sketchbook Workshop.



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