Featured Artist: Ashley Cook: Ground Floor Gallery

Seeing the Burning Bush

"I have always felt best in places which were not built up or heavily concreted; locations where people live more in harmony with nature.

The dominance of materialist thinking seems to have damaged our sense of wonder about nature and our place within it - our connection to it has become too remote.

This collection of work is inspired by the idea that we are in a process of the re-enchantment of nature.

In this late hour there seems to be an awakening and many are rediscovering the beauty of nature as something central to life. It seems that many of us hope to move us away from the manipulation of nature and reorient ourselves to different metaphors and sources of inspiration to develop a new ethical stance toward our world. It's a time to reconsider the impulses that have fed our relentless ambition for dominance over nature and see ourselves more as one of the branches of life connected to other living things.

I am interested in 'Ogham - the Celtic Tree' calendar with 13 lunar months and the pagan 'Wheel of the Year', with annual cycles of festivals observing chief solar events and the procession of the seasons. I feel more and more drawn to thought processes which observe these cycles and bring us into line with the natural world and the ancient rhythms we find there.

Recently I was commissioned to illustrate Scottish plants by a herbalist forager and I learned more about the wealth of healing properties we can find around us in the green world. 'Seeing The Burning Bush' is a homage to our natural world and all its magical properties."

Ashley Cook, 2023