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Some years ago I bought an old isolated mill, on the edge of a forest, in the hills of Northern Italy and began a programme of restoration. I discovered an extraordinary, unspoilt landscape in that region and witnessed how it transforms itself dramatically over the course of each season. The light is crystalline in spring and golden in summer; thick autumnal mists envelope the hills and blankets of deep snow cover the slopes in winter. The first pictorial subject that presented itself to me then, was the peculiarly lovely trees. At the lower levels they supply the only vertical accents in an otherwise horizontal landscape. In the foothills of the Apennines, where generations of enterprising and industrious farmers have cleared away boulders and dense forests, it is not uncommon to find a single tree standing proudly in a meadow or ploughed field. Each has its unique quality and disposition and, set off against a winter-white sky, creates a variety of remarkable silhouettes. This exhibition is a visual record of those isolated trees, made over a period of five years or so. Sometimes the perfect shot of a remote tree might be ruined by its proximity to telegraph poles, pylons, cars, farm buildings, vapour trails or other intrusive man-made objects. Unlike digital photography, you can't 'photoshop' out an invasive object on 35mm film. Gradually, through experimentation, I evolved a method of removing unwanted areas of the photographic print by scratching out, rubbing down or totally obliterating them. The process is very physical and involves partially destroying the negatives and photographic prints. I am particularly drawn to art that retains the marks of its own making and the evidence of its creation within its final appearance. Similarly, I'm attracted to old sepia images and faded photographs. Henry Fox Talbot's hauntingly beautiful salt print, made from a calotype negative, of a winter oak tree (c. 1842) is one of the earliest photographs ever taken. I chanced across it while making my own tree images and was fascinated to discover that not only his subject matter, but also his way of working, was comparable to mine. To produce such an image was an arduous procedure in those pioneering days of photography and necessitated heating, dripping, brushing, rinsing, dissolving, washing, wiping, blotting and drying plates and prints. My process is akin to this and results in a unique image that is simultaneously a photograph and a painting, hand-printed and individually worked. In my darkroom studio in London, I develop and print the negatives with the assistance of my technician Peter Leonardi and, not long after the chemicals have been rinsed away, begin the process of transforming the photograph. It is largely an improvisatory procedure involving various inks, dyes and pigments. The photographic paper comes from the Czech Republic and is especially tough – and it needs to be to withstand the rubbing, bruising, sanding, and general abuse it receives over the course of the work. As a printmaker, during the 1980s, I editioned etchings for other artists and, I suppose, all that inking up and wiping of copper plates can be detected in the surface quality of my current work. The old mill has since been sold and I have moved to Venice, where landscape and trees are rare but sculptures and statues can be found in plenty. These have become my new subjects. Frequent visits to Florence and other Renaissance cities in Northern Italy now fuel my work. Recently I returned to those hills of the Apennine region, to discover that farmers, (tired presumably of having to plough around them), have felled some of my favourite trees. The scratches and faded tones in my images, seem now to act as a metaphor for the passing of time, the ever-changing character of life and the inevitable failing of memory. Gerard Hastings, 2013 Cover: Verano, 2006/13, 39 x 49 cm

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