Jo Stephen

My first project of 2021 is a small collection of images from my beloved local woodlands in yellows, oranges, gold and blue. Some images are new, others are composed of older images to which I have layered and added textures and gold leaf.

The woods I have wandered in to take these images sit on the hills that surround the Winterborne Valley where I live. Once ancient woodland, they are now mainly beech and conifer plantations, but little stands of twisting gnarly oaks and overstood hazel coppice fringe the commercial woods.

There are numerous local ghost stories and tales associated with many of the woods, and many don’t like to venture there at night. But I adore these woods in the dark, when barn owls hunt like ghosts along the edges of the woods where they meet the fields and to walk there in thick mists and fogs transports me to a silent ancient other-world.

My woodland images are often influenced by the fairy tales and folk of my childhood and I hope convey the childlike wonder I feel as I walk in the company of trees and also a yearning to see the woods rewilded. I would like to feel the exhilaration of walking where wolves, lynx and bear roam as I did as a child in the Blue Ridge mountains in America.

These images will all be available to purchase as greetings cards in my shop at Love from the Artist. If you’d like to purchase a card please follow the link HERE. Thank you x