Matilda Bevan makes paintings, drawings, monoprints and collages that often respond to a place and its history. Her images may develop from the emotional tone in a landscape painting of the past, or from her own photographs that form her first step in interpreting a place.

Drawings are created slowly and in detail, while paintings and prints are completed quickly without revision, allowing expression to arise through engagement with the surface and materials of the artwork.

In this exhibition Bevan expands her interest in nature, and the histories of manual effort and skills on the land, that have shaped our relationship to the countryside today.

She draws on the Northumberland landscape and the work of artist and writer Thomas Hennell (1903-45) who travelled the British countryside documenting rural life in the 1930s. He was aware that industrial machinery would soon dominate in farming, bringing a decline in demand for people’s physical skills.

Both artists share an empathy for the land, for the people who work on it and their natural abilities, while through their individual practices, they document changes within the landscape at different periods in our history.