Ted Hughes, Top Withens, and a Whole New Series

I was 14 years old when I first discovered the poetry of Ted Hughes. I was a sullen and insecure teenager sleepwalking through school, finding almost everything either boring (classes) or terrifying (social interactions). But then we were handed a slim volume of poetry with a pale blue and orange cover. I still have my copy, marked with my notes and flicking . through it, I am taken back to that moment where I came alive. When I realised that art had the power to change you - to make a fundamental shift in the way you see the world and the way you see yourself.I went on to write my degree dissertation on Hughes' vision of nature and I made a series of drawing and paintings inspired by his landscape poems.And then life took over and I mostly forgot about him.But recently, I began to think about the poems again. I now live close to the landscape he wrote about in Remains of Elmet and so many of his other works, and I am interested in once again making art inspired by his words.Last week, I spent a morning up on the moors near Haworth, at Top Withens. This remote crumbling farm house is said to have inspired Wuthering Heights (although this is up for debate).To reach it, you have to walk a couple of miles uphill from the nearest road which just makes you marvel at the people who  lived and farmed here hundreds of years ago.Hughes wrote an amazing poem about the life and death of this old house, which I am probably not allowed to reproduce in full. He describes the place as "the dead end of a wrong direction." While this is certainly true for the inhabitants, there can be nowhere more beautiful on a sunny August day.I made a series of rough sketches while I was up there. These were not intended as realistic depictions, but rather as experiments in colour and mark-making. For me, sketching in these circumstances is more about embedding the experience in my brain, rather than about making a picture.I am now working on large sheets of paper and/or card, further developing my ideas.I do not want to push these pieces too far - but rather to keep making more, allowing the work to go in the directions that flow most naturally.I really like this elongated shape and plan to make more like this: And I am excited by these larger pieces They feel consistent with my prior work while also representing something of a departure, which I take as an encouraging sign that I am allowing both the poetry and the experience of that very particular landscape to influence my paintings.My next steps will be to continue working on paper and to experiment with different shapes and sizes.I'll keep sharing as I go :)