Here is 'Swifts Hollow', a screen print made at the Slowly Downward Manufactory from a drawing I did based on a trackway near Shere in the hills of Surrey, a county located to the south of London. Across these hills are many old 'drove roads', roads that were once used to walk with cattle from field to market, and have never been made up with concrete or tarmac. They remain open to all traffic, strangely enough, so if you desire you can drive a massive SUV along them; and judging by the churned mud that is exactly what a certain section of the public likes to do.
But these trackways are extraordinarily fragile, home to a plethora of wildlife and some of the most extravagant mosses and lichens to be found anywhere in the islands of Britain. Most of the drove roads are very old, carved into the landscape by centuries of footsteps and hoof-marks, deepened by age and the weather. It was in Surrey that I first saw a holloway, somewhere near a place named Friday Street. I now draw these sunken ways almost as a meditation.
This print is in an edition of 99
The paper size is approximately 610mm x 465mm
The print size is approximately 550mm x 400mm
They're signed and numbered by myself and stamped with the Slowly Downward Manufactory embossing stamp.
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