Graham Giles
I am very fortunate that three key pleasures in my life all come together in my work - being out of doors, painting and trees.
My studio in Suffolk for the past fifty years is at the end of an avenue of tall oak trees, whilst at the bottom of my garden stand two great oaks that I spent the Covid lockdown of spring 2020 painting from dawn to dusk. I watched them transformed from bare winter skeletons to the golden radiance of their new leaves and catkins against blue skies - and was able to complete seven large paintings on hand-made paper out of doors in the untoward weather.
I also love painting the venerable Scots Pines that grow near the Suffolk coast at Aldringham, with their sharp smell of resin and the echoes of Cezanne and the Mediterranean. I revel in the differences between varieties of trees, and the personalities of individual examples. I grieve for the loss of our Suffolk elms.
I am fascinated by the growth and structure of trees; I see a strong connection between the language evolved by the masons who built the wonderful medieval churches in Suffolk and the trees amongst which they lived their lives. The organic growth they observed in trees combined with simple geometry to make a powerful vocabulary, visible in their carved window traceries (and lacking in Victorian turned replacements).
Awareness of these medieval designs in stone informs my own thinking process as I work on my tree studies.