Art and Photography Online Exhibition

Colne Valley Flowing Through a Changing Landscape

In September 2019, Art and Photography workshops were held as part of the Walks Through a Changing Landscape project supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

No experience was required to attend the art and photography workshops lead by experts, Alexandra and Rob respectively – we just hoped that people would come along, capture the landscape of the Colne Valley and enjoy the day. Besides discovering the Colne Valley the aim was to relate the work created by the participants from the Art and Photography workshops to the Stephen Springall 1907 book, Country Rambles Round Uxbridge.

But who is Stephen Springall?

Stephen Springall lived in the Uxbridge area for many years. He was a keen rambler and advocate for rights-of-way access to everyone. In 1907 he wrote a book, Country Rambles Round Uxbridge. The book contains 16 rambles, many of them exploring locations in the Colne Valley Regional Park.

Throughout his many rambles he detailed the landscape from rivers, fields, parks and orchards to churches, clay fields and mills as well as his thoughts and opinions of the landscape he encountered during his rambles.

Over the past 100 years since Springall’s 1907 book Country Rambles Round Uxbridge the landscape has changed. In some cases, quite dramatically though increasing population, urbanisation and industry – laney ways have become busy roads and fields have disappeared to housing and quarried lakes. However, in some areas such as along rivers and canals and through woodland there has been little landscape change from Springall’s day.

Online Exhibition

The galleries below exhibit some of the submitted work from the workshop days.

The art and photographs created by the workshop participants give us a view of not only landscapes that Springall might have encountered during his rambles but also of landscapes changes from Springall’s 1907 memories.

It was hoped that an exhibition would be held to display some of the art and photography from the workshop days but due COVID-19 and the unusual circumstance we are experiencing we are unable able to have a real exhibition at the moment, so we thought that exhibiting the work submitted online would be the next best thing.

We do hope that in the future we will be able to hold an exhibition so that you can enjoy the artwork and photographs in person.

‘Now do we again seek the pleasant ways of nature, and amid the softness of the green grass, the shade of the green trees, and beneath the azure of the blue skies, go boldly forth to ally ourselves with unfailing charms.’
Stephen Springall

Art Gallery

Photography Gallery

Sketches

The following images have been kindly provided by the art workshop participants. The images show sketches of locations visited during the workshops, ideas of possible compositions and work in progress while creating the artwork.

Flora and Fauna

The following images will show you a different perspective of photography taken by the participants. The focus points for the images are Flora and Fauna in the Colne Valley Regional Park.