So You think You Are Safe In The Woods

About

If we drift too far from the main path, we lose ourselves, and in getting lost, our whole survival may be at stake. The diffused and dappled light makes us see things that may not be there and projecting our own hopes and fears into the gloom, we create stories; the content of which hold up a mirror to our own state of our mind.
In the modern world, we have become uprooted from our essential nature. But spending time in the forest, we are replanted and become more able to reconnect with our primal essence.
Caroline Watson is an artist based at BV Studios in Bristol. Primarily a painter, she also makes 3D objects which add to and inform her artistic practice. Her work is concerned with imaginative states, and she uses her experiences as a catalyst for making. During lockdown, Caroline began to take regular walks in the local woods for exercise and mental health, revisiting old habits from childhood.
She says, ‘The woods provide me with a space to dream and it seems apposite now to place my ideas within the context of the forest.’ Her drawings in this exhibition mark the beginning of a new body of work.
Ruth Piper is a painter, also based at BV Studios. Her own childhood was largely spent wandering on the North Downs and the surrounding woods and fields of Kent. She was rather afraid in the woods during long family walks. The trees seemed to have an unsettling presence and there were strange amorphous shapes in the trees.
Her paintings are composite landscapes, that have a nocturnal appearance. Built up or layered from elements, either invented or observed separately in different places. They have gentle, romantic, and melancholic atmosphere.