The New Forest is a place of many trees, with ancient oak and beech countering the more recently planted conifers. This difference of tree type comes with a change of mood, the massive more rounded forms of the deciduous trees contrasting with the more angular skeletal forms of spruce, larch and pine.
Woods are places of contradiction, they offer shelter and threat, abundance and ambush, symbols of age and stability which we know must one-day fall, we all have a complex relationship with trees either singly or en masse.
The conifers huddle together in a dark mass bringing memories of Grimm's fairy tales. The skeletal forms seem to evoke the ‘bones’ of trees. Do the ‘Dark Edges’ tempt us in or seek to frighten us away?
The deciduous woods seem more alive and vibrant with the ancient mythology of the ‘The Green Man’ visible in the ‘faces’ to be seen on their gnarled trunks. The benign massiveness of beeches, elf-like caprice of small birches, magical thorns and crab apples.