A Letter to the Earth from Beatrix

 Situated in quiet woodland in the Grasmere valley, overlooking the serene village with a rich history tracing back to Medieval times, and set against Lake Grasmere surrounded by ancient fells, Allan Bank stands as a key artefact in the heart of the Lake District owned by the National Trust. The house was built in 1805 by the Liverpool solicitor Gregory Crump and housed notable tenants such as the Romantic Poet Laureate William Wordsworth and his family; Samuel Taylor Coleridge, one of the Lake Poets; and Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, one of the founders of the National Trust, with his wife Eleanor. It was a hub of creativity and reform. Wordsworth wrote the first edition of “A Guide through the District of the Lakes” here. In later editions, the poet developed his criticism of the destruction of the natural environment through indiscreet human agency. Sir Jonathan Bate—biographer, critic, broadcaster, and scholar—stressed how Wordsworth’s critical view as an environmentalist influenced many who followed: John Ruskin, the Victorian art critic and social reformer; John Muir, naturalist and advocate for establishing Yosemite National Park; Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, as mentioned above; and Beatrix Potter, the children’s book author and conservationist, to name a few. Their collective voice and legacy resound ever louder in the current ecological crisis.

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In this art project, I explored the themes mentioned above, focusing on Beatrix Potter as an icon of inspiration on many levels: artist, researcher, celebrated author, farmer, entrepreneur, conservationist, and enactor of Canon Rawnsley’s ambitions for the conservation of the Lake District. This was manifested in her financial and organisational agency in acquiring and then bequeathing large estates to the National Trust in its early days, forming the core of its 25% ownership of the present National Park. At the same time, Potter maintained and supported farming traditions, notably the Herdwick sheep breed, which is now a mainstay of the Lake District Cultural Landscape World Heritage Site.

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The project comprised a large mural portrait of Beatrix and a two-storey mural of an old ash tree, transforming the internal walls of Allan Bank. The presence of a large mural portrait of Beatrix in Rawnsley’s home signified a line of continuity between Wordsworth, Ruskin, Rawnsley, and Potter in the development of the early landscape conservation movement. I aimed to portray Beatrix in her early to mid-twenties—before she reached her full potential in later years—in a quest to immortalise her like a Muse, so that her voice echoes in our contemporary society and beyond. Young Beatrix, depicted in a manner no artist has ever portrayed, was also designed to be relatable to young audiences, her burgeoning environmental awareness mirroring the youthful leadership of the modern environmental movement. At the same time, my large-scale mural of an old ash tree symbolised Beatrix's passion inherited by the National Trust, which would launch a conservation campaign for the European ash, which is dying.

 

As for the style, I referenced Japanese traditional paintings, particularly those produced in the Edo Rinpa style by Sakai Hōitsu and Suzuki Kiitsu. The style recalled the Japonisme of the cultural elite in which Potter grew up (a key artefact in the major Beatrix Potter exhibition at the V&A in 2022 was Beatrix's late 19th-century Japanese tansu cabinet, once part of her Kensington home and later moved to Hill Top, her house in the Lake District). The distinctly Japanese treatment—at once architectural and intensely graphic—alluded to the international nature of wealth, empire, and aesthetics that underpinned what appeared on the surface to be a deeply local, native, and internalised culture of the Lake District villa. This old ash tree was based on the one standing at Cartmel Priory, which William Wordsworth once visited to mourn his teacher and mentor, who died prematurely and was buried in the church graveyard. At Allan Bank, Wordsworth wrote the first edition of ‘The Guide to the District of the Lakes’, and its later editions catalysed the conservation movement in the Lake District and America. His passion was succeeded by Canon Hardwicke Rawnsley, who inspired Beatrix Potter on the importance of conservation. This old ash tree symbolised the unbroken chain of the ecological movement up to the present day. Alongside the mural paintings, I produced a series of small works inspired by Beatrix's creativity, culminating in a solo exhibition in a dedicated room at the grand opening in September. This exhibition consisted of these small works alongside an original drawing, a wooden panel portrait of Beatrix Potter, and portrait drawings of William Wordsworth and Hardwicke Rawnsley.

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The series of small works was partly a homage to the great body of work that Beatrix Potter amassed, as well as an attempt to shine a spotlight on her creativity. As is well known, the name "Beatrix Potter" is synonymous with her "Little Books", namely the Peter Rabbit series. I wondered what the secret to this enduring popularity was. I believe it is the vitality with which Beatrix imbued each character, allowing the reader to feel they are about to leap from the page at any moment. Take, for example, Jeremy Fisher. Although frogs and toads in real life are slimy and squat, in Beatrix’s hands, he becomes magically endearing. I am certain that this ability to express so much through drawing is based on skills acquired by Beatrix in her childhood. We know that she kept rabbits, mice, hedgehogs, lizards, tortoises, and bats as pets and drew them. I am fascinated, above all, by the vast quantity of fungi that she painted. These works are not simply a collection of drawings but original research materials that took her to the forefront of mycological research. Based on these studies, she compiled a paper entitled “On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae” and submitted it to the Linnean Society in London, the authority on taxonomy and natural history. At the time, the society was not open to women; Potter abandoned her attempt to have the paper published and eventually stopped drawing fungi. I have been lucky enough to view some of the 350 drawings of natural subjects that Beatrix bequeathed to the Armitt Library in Ambleside and was astonished by their accuracy, both in artistic and scientific terms. These drawings were produced several years before she wrote the illustrated letter to her governess Annie Moore’s son, Noel, which would become “The Tale of Peter Rabbit”. The characters she created were all based on similarly acute levels of observation. As a Japanese artist living and working in the Lake District today, I have tried to reinterpret the stories and characters to which she gave birth. The result was a series of portraits of small animals (including my own pets) that I met in my own daily life.

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For the new series of animal portraits, I developed the idea based on the same concept as the previous series, portraying small animals I encountered daily. However, I attempted to broaden my scope further into contemporary society. For instance, Portrait #16 (Herdwick Ram, a Rogue Politician) was not, as it might first appear, a harsh satirical criticism of a particular politician. Rather, it metaphorically raised questions about power, corruption, and lies within our current political systems. When I read The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, I noticed that Beatrix deliberately gave reptiles names such as “Sir Isaac Newton” and “Mr. Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise”, satirising stubborn academic authorities. In her case, this may have been a dig at the Linnean Society. Stubbornness, corruption, and power within the political climate continue to produce new wars and riots in our time; in reflection of this, I produced Portrait #15 (Cat, an Armed Policewoman), depicting the cat as a peacekeeper against sexism, racism, and abuse of power.

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At the same time, I have also attempted to encompass human endeavour throughout history while linking it to the future. Portrait #14 (Badger, Memento Mori), for instance, was a homage to the lasting legacy of Western art and its concept of Memento Mori, meaning “Remember your mortality”. On a walk with our beloved springer spaniel Joe through the woods near our house, I found the skull of a badger, from which I developed the concept of this work. Sadly, Joe died in early 2023, and Portrait #23 (Springer Spaniel, a Countryman) was dedicated to our happy memories of him. For Portrait #18 (Rat in Spacesuit), I explored the meaning of the age of space development. Rats have always been present wherever humans were, creeping into ships since ancient times; I wondered if they are ready for space travel. This rat, alongside the shrew depicted in Portrait #22 (Shrew Napping in Hammock), both came into our home as a result of our late and beloved cat Mei, who hunted them.

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Portrait #13 (Android Herdwick Lamb Dreaming of Electric Sheep), as would be obvious to many, was a homage to the prophetic Sci-Fi novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick, the source for the film “Blade Runner”. Directed by Ridley Scott, this is one of my favourite films, and I decided to embody the concept in this way, given the recent acceleration of progress in Artificial Intelligence. As leading computer scientists and tech CEOs raise concerns about the existential risk from Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), I wonder where we humans are heading. I hope that, rather than an apocalyptic dystopia, we will see super-intelligent AI robots becoming Artificial Friends (AF), as Kazuo Ishiguro depicted in his novel "Klara and the Sun". For Portrait #19 (Red Cow, a Melancholic Butcher), I explored the pending ecological crisis. We are told that one of the causes is our excessive global meat consumption. The cow in this portrait is pondering whether it is possible to satisfy humanity while minimising the destruction of grasslands and forests.

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The other portraits all followed largely the same concept—some humorous, some satirical, some jocular—reflecting our contemporary culture. All these portraits were in black and white, allowing the viewer to colour them and fill them with life according to their own imagination. Hence, I have named the project "A Letter to the Earth from Beatrix", imagining a youthful letter from Potter to herself as an older person, also addressing future generations.

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I completed all works (apart from drawings) with a unique line hatching technique which I created and have developed over the past 18 years. This method is a fusion of the concept of disegno, established in the Florentine School during the Renaissance, and neurological studies, which reveal that the human visual brain perceives objects predominantly through oriented lines.  

 

This project was generously supported by Arts Council England in 2022 and has become part of the interpretation and curation of Allan Bank. The project was also directly linked to the National Trust’s local response to the co-curated National Trust / V&A show in 2022.