Description
This is a book about process, about material, connection and relationship, it is personal and metaphysical, about un-learning, re-learning and enrichment, it is about colour and history and geology, it is about making and obsession, it is about truth and contradiction, this book is about earth.
This rich, 214 page book is a survey of Peter Ward’s extraordinary body of work (so far!). He shares his essential philosophy – an ecological thought that infuses, powerfully, all of his work. Peter has become increasingly outspoken about his passion for planet and his work elementally reflects this passion. While it may be, for a while, fashionable to use earth pigments and naturally-derived clays (partly as a result of the lifelong work by Peter Ward and others), there is a core group of artist who have dived deep into the core of the earth around them. Peter Ward should be considered now as one of the greats in this area of work. So this book is not borne of fashion but of a fundamental and profound attachment to the earth – ultimately, as Peter tells us in his introduction ‘this book is about earth’.
In introducing the book Peter tells us that ‘this book has come about as an attempt to assimilate a large body of work created over many years as a result of contact and research around the matter of earth pigments, their formation, gathering, processing and creative application, most specifically within the counties of Devon and Cornwall in the southwest of the geographical region of England, set as it is upon the north western seaboard of the politically allocated continent of Europe. Significantly, the majority of my ancestors from both matrilineal and patrilineal sides, stretching back over 700 years have also hailed from the region, sometimes known as Wessex’
214 pages with 141 colour illustrations • paperback 210x210mm
ISBN 978-1-7397604-2-7