Hannah Rollings, In the Heather of the Common Land, 2024, oil, emulsion, oil pastel and ink on handmade paper, 31x22cm

"I chose to paint at the Devils Punch Bowl in Surrey, a local site to me that is ancient, wild, full of mysterious stories and important trees. I am working on a series of paintings that were featured in the conference 'Therapeutic Landscapes: Ritual, Wellbeing and Folkore at the University of Worcester.

As a smallholder and painter, I am interested in the educational value of working landscapes and lost traditions specific to the Broomsquires of the heath, who would live and work making besom brooms from the heather and birch found in the heathland at the Devils Punch Bowl, Surrey.

My practice-led PhD research has seen me develop participatory activities picturing trees for wellbeing and education; "From Screen to Green, Re Connecting Children to Nature through the Picturing of Trees" in the Narrative Non- Fiction Picturebook.

Continuing to work in an autoethnographic approach, working plein air through walks and large-scale painting, I hope to bring to life the immersive location and elements of ritual surrounding the Broomsquires, by making brushes and mark making devices through an attempt to rekindle the traditional besom broom craft.

My current painting practice comes from a need and desire to reconnect with nature, as I have spent many years making images through a fractured process. Layered hand painted images compiled digitally due to the commercial requirements of freelance illustration work requiring changes and flexibility.

My research has led me to immerse myself in nature spending time to document specific places alongside the welcomed problem of creating more permanent images that are more ambitious in scale. I have found a liberation in this process of plein air/reportage documentation that picture the unique aspects and atmosphere of personal experiences moving away from more literal representations. The tools in which I use to further problematise this practice gives another rich sense of place.

By creating and facilitating an immersive experience I hope to counter the 'nature deficit disorder' outlined by Richard Louv in 2005 and practice what I preach 'from screen to green.' Establishing an experiential process 'Painting the land.' I am interested in working on site, immersed in the landscape and its characteristics. Previously working on location has been a research tool rather than an outcome. I would have to refine and combine on screen to feel that the work was more developed to achieve an outcome. Observing and slowing down my time in the landscape has helped me to appreciate a simplified honesty that doesn't require further narration."

Hannah Kershaw (Rollings) (b.1985, UK). In 2014 Hannah embarked on a practice based AHRC funded PhD through Kingston University and the London Doctoral Design Centre looking at picturing trees where her love of nature and the pull of the outdoors gained further importance in her practice. Working collaboratively with the Forestry Commission and school children developing site specific interactive work that sought to encourage a reconnection with nature, 'From Screen to Green'.

Through painting plein air, Hannah seeks to connect with her surroundings through an immersive painting experience exploring an emotive response to colour and mark making; culminating into a practice that sits somewhere between abstraction and representation.