After the storm
2009
1215 x 755 mms
pen-and-ink on watercolour paper
In the early winter of 2008, a violent storm hits a small and ancient wood near Nicholson’s studio, tearing down twigs and branches and toppling a number of trees. This is a wood which has changed hands only once in the past 1200 years, and its floor contains the matter of a thousand storms, in each of which new material has been cast upon the old. The picture, composed in the spring and summer of 2009, is a study of the natural processes of decay and regeneration. Among the plant species depicted are Hard Fern, bluebells, lichens and mosses – species that long predate the arrival of homo sapiens – and their presence in the picture is a tribute by Nicholson to their endurance. However, she was conscious of the precariousness of their situation at a time of global warming. ‘The future is uncertain,’ she wrote: ‘the impact of an even slight temperature rise [on the survival of such plants] may be devastating’.
