Blaze Cyan | A Landscape of Trees

Of course, Blaze’s work is strongly rooted in the long-established English pastoral tradition – particularly within printmaking. There can often be an intimidating or paralyzing weight of precedent and tradition for artists who work with landscape in this country, but Blaze brings many fresh angles to the ancient woods. She is a part of a group called The Arborealists: artists who all nurture a similar passion for trees. One of their art historical heroes is Samuel Palmer, whose Romantic etching lines are legendary both within and beyond the printmaking community. While this history is important, Blaze does not want to be too tethered to the past. She wants her pieces to convey a “living rather than dead landscape”. This living landscape comes through in the animated personalities with which she imbues each tree or group of trees. These arboreal identities can subtly shift and turn with each year of the tree’s life and so, to Blaze, the trees with the best personalities are the ancient or veteran examples. When searching for these beings, she tends to find the most charismatic ancient trees on protected lands, such as those owned by the National Trust, where trees have been left alone, relatively free from human interference, for hundreds or thousands of years. Each passing year not only adds a ring to the cross-section of the trunks of these trees, but also further inscribes the personality that Blaze is looking for into their branches and bark. Every one of these ancient trees could be the subject of dozens of prints or drawings from various angles and at different times of day, each artwork capturing a new facet of the tree’s existence. The subject is an inexhaustible one, and this exhibition is just a taste of not only the deep wells of character within trees, but also of the unique viewpoints that Blaze displays in her artistic practice. She is just a human, documenting the world of trees that we all inhabit.