For the past twenty years Grose has been walking the Cornish Coast Path, collecting images and ideas for this ongoing body of work. Over this time she has also developed a small flock of native and rare breed sheep, kept on the six acres where she works. There she also grows plants such as willow, ash, woad, nettles and apple to dye the wool from the sheep. These home-grown materials are used to create large scale, dynamic landscape images drawn from the process of walking the landscape.
Her way of working with these materials creates surfaces which seem alive, drawing the eye across the picture plane as colours and textures ebb and flow, generating feelings that range from calm to vertigo in the viewer.
There is a cyclical nature to this way of working. Over centuries, sheep have been a factor in shaping the landscape, as have the plants that grow there. The wool from which these works were created includes that from the breeds descended from those brought by early invaders and traders, adding a human and pre-historical echo to these expressions of geological time.
The processes underlying the work reflect the annual cycle of growth and development, and the preparation of materials such as shearing, planting and harvesting. These woolscapes embody a slow and respectful approach to nature and landscape in their material composition: they are made of materials which are part of an organic circulation; left out on in a field, each piece would ultimately dissolve back into the soil and plantsfrom which it came.
This is an ongoing project.
