In Catton Park (2020)

These images are drawn from a set of photographs taken in Catton Park in Norwich in July 2020. The park was the landscape designer Humphry Repton’s first public commission in the late eighteenth century. With that in mind, the photographs aim for a balance between formality and informality, using as few elements as possible to establish that balance. Park furniture such as tree guards can be glimpsed in some photographs, but the basic structure of these images – very loosely modelled on Rothko’s late series of “black-over-gray” paintings – places an upper rectangle of dark tree foliage above an a slightly lighter rectangle of grasses that are occasionally speckled with wild flowers. The imagery is characterized by a degree of pictorial restraint and sobriety, despite the burgeoning summer growth that it depicts.