Artist delights in beautiful ‘mess’ and dead trees of England’s rewilding sites
Artist Rebecca Howard is showcasing a new exhibition in West Sussex that highlights the aesthetic beauty of rewilding sites. Her work focuses on elements often considered 'messy' by traditional standards, such as dead trees and beaver-felled landscapes.
Why it matters
The exhibition challenges conventional perceptions of nature and promotes the ecological benefits of rewilding projects.
‘You don’t often see a dead tree in a painting’: Rebecca Howard working on one of her canvases. Photograph: c/o Rebecca Howard ‘You don’t often see a dead tree in a painting’: Rebecca Howard working on one of her canvases. Photograph: c/o Rebecca Howard Rewilding Artist delights in beautiful ‘mess’ and dead trees of England’s rewilding sites Rebecca Howard spent two years visiting projects and painting landscapes that feature in West Sussex exhibition
Prefer the Guardian on Google Rewilding areas do not usually conform to traditional notions of beauty in England’s green and pleasant land. Detractors may bewail the beaver-felled trees, untidy scrub, deadwood, weeds, mud and “mess”.
But a new exhibition highlights the aesthetic delights that can be discovered on rewilding sites where fungi grows on dying trees, water buffalo gather in new wetlands and brown-watered beaver pools flood once-desiccated fields.
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