Links - Getting to Devon

All photographs copyright © Dave Green

I love my county of North Devon, that is to say its natural constituents: land, coasts, skies, seas and, of course, its incomparable fauna and flora. The English poet Edward Thomas - one among so many - laid down his life for it. But the subject of this love is, of course, disappearing, piece by piece, species by species. And yet physical destruction is not the only concern. The danger in a world so materially distracted, so vicarious (occupied as I so often am myself, for example, in the alternative reality of an Apple computer) is that we are not sufficiently ‘out there’.
We no longer live or look upon the world as we should. And while this sentiment is hardly new it it is still a matter of increasing urgency. I paint because I have to, and also for kindred spirits, patriots in kind.
- Emily Clark, 2008