The Downs Wind Torn

The Downs, Kent is an a designated ‘Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty’.An ancient landscape with a cultural heritage and diverse wildlife and habitats. Standing on the edge of a hill or rise in winter you can feel the forces if the wind and weather as they bite into you and continue to form this landscape. Many places I used to walk in Kent have now been made inaccessible as roads take up more and more of this heritage. We readily see the need to protect wild species of animals and rightly so as they are easily identified and recognisable, yet plants and their habitats are ‘just there’ and their relevance and importance not generally noted. We become ‘Plant Blind’* I record the 'hidden' or often overlooked, the verges of our roadsides, flooded fields, small pockets of trees and the places where the urban meet the 'greater landscape.' Working with 'stitch sketching', I seek to capture a moment or thing before it is gone.